It’s been one week since the Palisades and Eaton Fires ignited, and the LA region is once again bracing for severe winds and potentially more fire damage over the next 36 hours. Reports have already clocked some winds at more than 70 miles an hour. Firefighters have increasingly contained fires on LA’s west and east sides. Meanwhile, investigations into the causes of both are underway. For insight on how they’ll likely proceed, KCRW hears from Tom Pierce, a former firefighter and now a fire investigator based in Bakersfield.
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is leading the Palisades investigation and will likely be the ones probing Eaton as well. That means the cause might be arson, Pierce confirms, adding that when fires reach a certain threshold of dollars lost, the feds get involved. However, they’re not necessarily looking for criminal activity.
“When we investigate fires, we don't go in with an expectation bias. … We go in with an open mind. We look at the forensic facts that are presented to us, so that we can start developing hypotheses. So as they get into the area of fire origin, they're going to lay out a huge grid line of maybe a quarter of an acre, maybe two or three acres,” Pierce explains. “And they're going to lay out ribbon and string in quads of, say, three feet per square. And then they're going to get down on their hands and knees, and they're going to comb every single section in there.”
He continues, “If you went in just saying, ‘Hey, this is a down power line,’ and you put on your blinders, and that's all you're looking for, you're going to miss what could potentially really be the fire. It could be a homeless encampment. So they're going to be looking for cooking utensils, food. … It may be a delayed incendiary device. So they're going to be looking for homemade incendiary devices. It could be slag from a power line. … These things take days and days and days, and lots of people power to do this.”
Homeowners have already filed four lawsuits against Southern California Edison for starting the Eaton Fire. Could the utility there be responsible?
Pierce explains that power lines can have “sags,” and when 70 mph winds come, those loose lines can slap together. Metal on a power line can be up to 3000 degrees and can easily start a fire, he notes.
In court, plaintiff attorneys will argue that the utility company should have turned off the power in anticipation of powerful winds, Pierce says.
However, power companies have deep pockets. And they’re usually “immediately in the bull's eye,” but something else might have caused the blazes, he points out. “So we need to be … using the scientific method and testing hypotheses to eliminate every other potential heat source that could have occurred.”
As for the Palisades Fire, one theory is that embers from a fire earlier in January reignited in the winds. Pierce says that’s a working hypothesis. “We have … forest fires that have rekindled the next summer. … Even though snow has been on the ground, you have a log that just stays smoldering until enough wind comes up and reignites it, and then it starts up. … And two weeks, if the fire wasn't properly put out, those things can lay dormant.”
He adds, “Even people, after their barbecue, they dispose of the ashes in their trash can, and trash can’s up against the house, and next thing you know, the house is on fire.”
So how do firefighters prevent an ember from reigning?
“In a brush situation like that, after the suppression crew has come in, it would have been best to have had a hand crew, with shovels and Pulaskis … put a fire line around the perimeter of where that fire was. That creates 100% containment. … You put in a hand line where you go to the burn and remove three to four feet of the unburned away, so that you have just this big dirt track all the way around the burned area. And then come back in and do a mop-up with water and hand tools, just to make sure that it's dead out.”
As for when investigators will finalize their report and release it, Pierce says it could be one year (that’s what happened with the Maui fire probe).