L.A. is focused on wrong flame

LOS ANGELES is racing at breakneck speed to rebuild after the most destructive fire in the city’s history.

- JONATHAN VIGLIOTTI

THE OLYMPIC CAULDRON is lighted at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum ahead of ticket registration for the 2028 Games.

DAMIAN DOVARGANES Associated Press

It is a pace so publicly tethered to the 2028 Summer Olympics that Gov. Gavin Newsom referred to the global event as the “Recovery Games.”

But in the sprint for gold, public safety is being sidelined. This massive rebuild is now about damage control more than it is prevention. The tone was set almost immediately.

Just 24 hours after the Palisades fire ignited in January 2025, while homes were still burning and firefighters were stretched thin, Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass toured the burn zone. The visit itself was unusual: Active fire scenes are not typically stages for political walk-throughs. Their presence underscored the criticism they were already facing over a failed response, including the absence of clear public warnings ahead of historic 100-mph winds. No live news conference was held before the storm, a break from past emergencies of this scale.

Bass was actually in Africa when the fire erupted, a fact unknown to many outside her inner circle. She was unresponsive during a critical hour of the disaster while attending a reception at the U.S. ambassador's residence in Accra, Ghana, and she couldn't communicate reliably during her 22-hour journey back to Los Angeles, as I report in my forthcoming book, “Torched.” Newsom had been preoccupied with planning a visit by then-President Biden to designate the Chuckwalla and Sattitla national monuments.

“The first time they toured the damage, they discussed the Olympics and federal funding,” one city official told me, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Losing the Palisades hurt them politically. Losing the Olympics would be game over.”

Game over, unless they changed the rules.