LAFD didn't use vital tool to confirm Jan. 1 blaze was out

Thermal imaging wasn't employed before Palisades fire erupted, officials say.

- ALENE TCHEKMEDYIAN, HANNAH FRY AND RICHARD WINTON

THE PALISADES FIRE leveled more than 6,800 structures and killed 12 people.

Los Angeles firefighters did not use thermal imaging technology to detect lingering embers underground after a New Year's Day fire in Pacific Palisades that flared up days later to become one of the most destructive infernos in the city's history.

Interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva said in an interview Wednesday that fire officials decided against employing the technology, which could have pinpointed heat underground, because of the fire’s eight-acre size.

In the 36-plus hours that crews spent mopping up the Jan. 1 fire, which federal prosecutors say was deliberately started along a popular hiking trail, firefighters “cold-trailed” the perimeter, chopping a line around the fire and feeling for residual heat. They packed up and left on Jan. 2, then returned the next day, after a report of smoke in the area, for another round of cold-trailing, Villanueva said.

Villanueva downplayed the effectiveness of the thermal imaging cameras, noting that some chaparral in the city extends 15 to 25 feet underground, while the depth of the department's cameras is only a foot.

“We did everything that we could do,” he said.

Los Angeles Fire Department officials, already under scrutiny for their failure to pre-deploy engines in advance of the Palisades fire, are facing questions about why they didn’t fully extinguish the Jan. 1 fire before hurricane-force winds fanned an ember buried within the roots of dense vegetation on Jan. 7. The Palisades fire killed 12 people, charred 23,400 acres and leveled more than 6,800 structures, including many homes.