LAFD won't revisit report's edits

Chief says he's moving on instead of looking back at watered-down after-action fire study.

- ALENE TCHEKMEDYIAN AND NOAH GOLDBERG

GENARO MOLINA Los Angeles Times GOING FORWARD, LAFD Chief Jaime Moore said he will not allow edits to after-action fire reports.

After admitting last week that the Los Angeles Fire Department's after-action report on the Palisades fire was watered down so as not to reflect poorly on top command staff, Fire Chief Jaime Moore said Monday he does not plan to determine who was responsible.

Moore said he is taking a forward-looking approach and not seeking to assign blame for changes to the Oct. 8 report that downplayed the city's failures in preparing for and responding to the disaster. But he said his predecessor, interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva, ultimately was responsible for releasing the contents of the report.

As chief, Moore said, he will not allow similar edits to after-action reports, which he said are intended to help the department learn from and correct past errors.

"I don't think there's really any benefit to me" looking into who made the edits, Moore said in an interview with The Times. "I can see where the original report and the public report aim to fix the same thing. They aim to correct where we could have been better. And it identifies ... the steps that are going to be necessary to make those corrective actions."

Moore, an LAFD veteran who took the helm of the agency about two months ago, said last week that the edits to the after-action report, which were first documented by The Times, were intended to "soften language and reduce explicit criticism of department leadership."

On Monday he said Villanueva "made the decision to publish it, had something to do with the decision that it was going to be published publicly, which caused these drafts to occur."