L.A. firefighter testifies that Lachman fire was not fully put out. ‘I saw … red hot coals’

A Los Angeles firefighter said in sworn testimony that he sounded an alarm about the inadequate mop-up of the Lachman fire — and was blown off by a captain — days before the embers reignited into the deadly Palisades fire.

Scott Pike, a 23-year LAFD veteran, was assigned to roll up hoses that had been left out overnight at the scene of the Lachman fire.

Around 8:45 a.m. on Jan. 2, 2025, Pike saw about five areas that were still smoking, he testified last month in a lawsuit brought by Palisades fire victims against the city and the state.

At one ash pit, Pike said, “I didn’t even want to use my gloved hand because it was hot. So I just kicked it with my boot to kind of expose it, and there was, like red hot, like, coals … that was still smoldering. And I even heard crackling.”

Pike’s dramatic retelling, which attorneys representing the city initially blocked from release along with transcripts of deposition testimony from 11 other firefighters, corroborates previous reporting by The Times that a battalion chief ordered crews to pack up their hoses and leave, despite signs that the Lachman fire was not completely extinguished.

Pike, who has responded to as many as 100 wildfires in his career, was normally assigned to a station in Sunland and was working an overtime shift at Fire Station 23 in Pacific Palisades. He testified that when he reported his observations to other firefighters, “I felt like I kind of got blown off a little bit.”

Then he tried the captain.

“That’s how I approached him, is like, ‘Hey, Cap … We have hot spots in general. We have some ash pits,’” Pike said of the captain on the scene, whose name he did not know. “That’s an alert to double-check the whole area and maybe we need to switch our tactics.”

Pike testified that it was not his job “to overstep and tell him what to do. He earned that rank.”

The captain, he said, suggested possibly bringing hand tools or backpacks filled with water up the hill to extinguish any hot spots. So Pike went back to picking up the hose while awaiting new orders.

But those orders never came.

The other firefighters, too, seemed eager to “just get this hose picked up,” Pike said, adding that he was working overtime the day after a holiday “because nobody else wanted to work it.”

“It kind of sits heavy with me that nobody listened to me,” he said.

Pike also said that containment lines at the scene were not cut properly.

“I didn’t see any — what I would call … a properly cut line … that delineated the difference between burned and unburned,” he said.

The five areas that were smoking, which Pike saw when he hiked to the end of the hose line, should have been enough to trigger a closer look, he said.

“That’s all I needed to see for me to know that if I were, say, in charge … I would have investigated the whole burn scar,” he testified.

LAFD commanders have insisted that the flames were completely out and barely mentioned the earlier fire in an after-action review report designed to examine mistakes and prevent them from happening again.

Pike said in his testimony that he was never interviewed for the after-action report.

After the firefighters testified over the course of three weeks, attorneys representing the city invoked a general protective order that any party in the litigation could designate testimony as confidential for up to 30 days. One of the attorneys previously told The Times that this allowed them to review the testimony and determine which parts, if any, should stay confidential.

Days after the firefighters left the scene, high winds whipped up the embers into the inferno that killed 12 people and destroyed much of Pacific Palisades and surrounding areas.

Alex Robertson, an attorney representing the Palisades fire victims in the lawsuit, said the other firefighters testified that the fire was out and that they did not see hot spots or smoldering.

“Only one of the firefighters we deposed had the courage to tell the truth — that his fellow firefighters and captain ignored his warnings that the fire had not been fully extinguished,” Robertson said.

LAFD spokesperson Stephanie Bishop said in a statement Friday that Fire Chief Jaime Moore is “concerned about the differences in the firefighters’ testimonies.”

“That concern underscores why the ongoing independent investigation is so important, and why the Chief is fully committed to providing complete cooperation on behalf of himself and the Department. He is prepared to support the findings, wherever they lead, and to act on any recommendations that strengthen accountability, transparency, and public trust,” Bishop said, referring to an investigation ordered by the City Council that is being conducted by Critical Preparedness Response Solutions.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Mayor Karen Bass called Pike’s testimony “tremendously alarming,” noting that Bass had already ordered a “full investigation” of the Lachman fire.

“For more than a year, Mayor Bass has been extremely public about her demand for transparency and accountability to inform ongoing Fire Department reforms, and because those affected deserve nothing less,” said the statement from the spokesperson, Yusef Robb.

Those reforms include a new “extinguishing protocol that addresses some of the issues raised around the Lachman Fire,” the statement said.

An attorney representing the city did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A representative of the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City, the firefighters’ union, also did not immediately comment.

In the lawsuit, fire victims allege that the state government, which owns Topanga State Park, failed in the week between the two fires to inspect the burn scar after firefighters left and make sure a “dangerous condition” did not exist on its property.

The LAFD was responsible for putting out the fire, but plaintiffs’ attorneys argue that the state should have done more to monitor the burn scar and ensure the area was safe.

Testimony and texts from several California State Parks representatives show that their initial concern was whether the fire was on parkland and whether firefighting efforts and equipment would harm federally endangered plants and artifacts.

The Times report about crews being ordered to leave the earlier fire, published Oct. 30, described text messages from firefighters sent in the weeks and months after the Palisades fire indicating that at the scene of the Lachman fire on Jan. 2 last year, the ground was still smoldering and rocks were hot to the touch.

In one text message, a firefighter who was at the scene wrote that the battalion chief had been told it was a “bad idea” to leave because of the visible signs of smoking terrain, which crews feared could start a new fire if left unprotected.

“And the rest is history,” the firefighter wrote.

A second firefighter was told that tree stumps were still hot when the crew packed up and left, according to the texts. And a third firefighter said that crew members were upset when told to pack up and leave but that they could not ignore orders, according to the texts. The third firefighter also wrote that he and his colleagues knew immediately that the Palisades fire was a rekindle of the earlier blaze.

LAFD officials were emphatic early on that the Lachman fire, which federal prosecutors believe was deliberately set, was fully extinguished.

“We won’t leave a fire that has any hot spots,” Kristin Crowley, the fire chief at the time, said at a community meeting on Jan. 16, 2025.

“That fire was dead out,” Chief Deputy Joe Everett said at the same meeting, adding that he was out of town but communicating with the incident commander. “If it is determined that was the cause, it would be a phenomenon.”

The Lachman fire broke out shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day. A few hours later, at 4:46 a.m., the LAFD announced that the blaze was fully contained at eight acres.

Top commanders soon made plans to finish mopping up the scene and to leave with their equipment, according to another set of text messages obtained by The Times through a state Public Records Act request.

“I imagine it might take all day to get that hose off the hill,” LAFD Chief Deputy Phillip Fligiel said in a group chat early the morning of Jan. 1. “Make sure that plan is coordinated.”

At 1:35 p.m. on Jan. 2, Battalion Chief Mario Garcia — whom firefighters said had received the observations about the smoldering ground and hot rocks, according to the private text messages The Times reviewed — texted Fligiel and Everett: “All hose and equipment has been picked up.”

After the Oct. 30 Times report, Bass directed Moore, who started the job in November, to commission an independent investigation into the LAFD’s handling of the Lachman fire.

Moore said last month that he opened an internal investigation into the Lachman fire through the LAFD’s Professional Standards Division, which probes complaints against department members. He also requested the Fire Safety Research Institute, which is reviewing last January’s wildfires at the request of Gov. Gavin Newsom, to include the Lachman fire as part of its analysis, and the institute agreed.

Moore added that he spoke with the battalion chief who was on duty during the Lachman fire mop-up. He did not identify the battalion chief, but Garcia was on duty at the time.

“He swears to me that nobody ever told him verbally or through a text message that there was any hot spots,” Moore said.