Scrutiny turns to state's role in Palisades fire

Video of smoke rising from burn scar sparks allegations of failure to monitor the site.

- BY JENNY JARVIE AND NOAH HAGGERTY

A hiker clambers across a scorched landscape of ash, his footsteps crunching on charred earth as he peers over a ridge at a burn scar pocked with blackened stumps. Below are thickets of green chaparral and densely packed homes.

Suddenly, he stops. He zooms the camera in to wisps of white smoke rising from the dirt.

“It’s still smoldering,” he whispers — apparently to himself. No firefighters or state park rangers are visible.

The video of smoke on a hillside above Los Angeles’ Pacific Palisades was shot by a local resident above Skull Rock Trailhead at 11:30 a.m on Jan. 2 — nearly 36 hours after the Lachman fire ignited and long after the Los Angeles Fire Department deemed the fire “fully contained.”

The footage is one piece of a puzzle that has been the subject of much anger, attention and investigation since the January firestorms: What happened between the time L.A. firefighters declared the Lachman fire out and when it rekindled into a catastrophic firestorm that burned huge swaths of Pacific Palisades?

The video could also be key evidence for attorneys working on behalf of thousands who lost their homes against a player that has so far not received much attention.

Ever since federal officials arrested Jonathan Rinderknecht on Oct. 8 on suspicion of igniting the Lachman fire and revealed that embers from that blaze rekindled into the Jan. 7 Palisades fire — LAFD has faced the brunt of criticism for failing to fully extinguish the New Year's Day fire.

But lawyers representing thousands of Palisades fire victims are also focusing on another target.

They argue the state, which owns Topanga State Park, where the Palisades fire began, did not do enough to monitor the small Jan 1. Lachman brush fire and stop it reigniting six days later into the devastating Palisades fire that killed 12 people and destroyed more than 6,800 structures.