Months after the devastating Palisades fire, the head of the Los Angeles Fire Commission inquired about the Fire Department’s long-awaited after-action report.
Interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva said that a “working draft” had been sent to Mayor Karen Bass’ office, Genethia Hudley Hayes told The Times on Tuesday.
In the conversation, which took place in mid-August or later, Villanueva said that the mayor’s office had asked for “refinements,” but he did not say what they were, according to Hudley Hayes.
Hudley Hayes, who was appointed by Bass in June 2023 to serve on the five-member commission that provides civilian oversight of the LAFD, said that in her long career in civic roles, she had learned that words like “refinements” could mean troubling changes to a government report, made for the purpose of hiding facts.
Earlier Tuesday, Fire Chief Jaime Moore, responding to the findings of a Times investigation, acknowledged that the after-action report had been edited to soften criticism of the LAFD leadership’s handling of the Palisades fire.
The Times had previously reported that Hudley Hayes was concerned enough about possible edits that she sought advice from a deputy city attorney.
But Hudley Hayes’ remarks Tuesday were her first public statements that her concerns stemmed from what she understood to be the mayor’s office’s possible intent to influence the report, which was supposed to lay out what went wrong in fighting the Palisades fire and how to prevent the mistakes from happening again.
Hudley Hayes said that after reviewing an early draft of the after-action report, as well as the final document released by the LAFD on Oct. 8, she was satisfied that “material findings” were not altered.
But her account raises questions about the mayor’s role in revisions to the report that, as Moore conceded Tuesday, downplayed the city’s failures in preparing for and responding to the fire, which killed 12 people and leveled much of the Palisades and surrounding areas.
On Tuesday, Bass’ office did not immediately explain what the refinements were. A spokesperson previously said that the office did not demand changes to the drafts and only asked the LAFD to confirm the accuracy of items such as how the weather and the department’s budget factored into the disaster.
“The report was written and edited by the Fire Department,” the spokesperson, Clara Karger, said in an email last month. “We did not red-line, review every page or review every draft of the report.”
The Times obtained and analyzed seven drafts of the report and identified deletions and revisions. The most significant changes in the various iterations of the report involved the LAFD’s deployment decisions before the fire, as the wind warnings became increasingly dire.
In one instance, LAFD officials removed language saying that the decision not to fully staff up and pre-deploy all available crews and engines ahead of the extreme wind forecast “did not align” with the department’s policy and procedures during red flag days. Instead, the final report said that the number of engine companies rolled out ahead of the fire “went above and beyond the standard LAFD pre-deployment matrix.”
Moore, who replaced Villanueva in November, admitted that the report was watered down to shield top brass from scrutiny.
“It is now clear that multiple drafts were edited to soften language and reduce explicit criticism of department leadership in that final report,” Moore said at a Fire Commission meeting Tuesday. “This editing occurred prior to my appointment as fire chief. And I can assure you that nothing of this sort will ever again happen while I am fire chief.”
The LAFD did not respond to a query about who ordered the changes to the report. Villanueva also did not respond Tuesday to requests for comment.
Hudley Hayes said she reached out to Villanueva around Aug. 21, when The Times published a story quoting a colleague on the Fire Commission, Sharon Delugach, expressing a desire to see the after-action report.
“It occurred to me then that she was correct. We hadn’t seen one — it was taking a long time,” Hudley Hayes said. “That’s the point I called interim Chief Villanueva.”
Meanwhile, the author of the report, Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, had emailed a PDF of his report to Villanueva in early August, asking the chief to select a couple of people to provide edits so he could make the changes in his Word document.
The following week, Cook emailed the chief his final draft.
“Thank you for all your hard work,” Villanueva responded. “I’ll let you know how we’re going to move forward.”
Over the next two months, the report went through a series of edits — behind closed doors and without Cook’s involvement, as The Times disclosed last month.
On Oct. 8, the same day the report was released, Cook emailed Villanueva, declining to endorse the public version because of changes that altered his findings and made the report “highly unprofessional and inconsistent with our established standards.”
“Having reviewed the revised version submitted by your office, I must respectfully decline to endorse it in its current form,” Cook wrote in the email obtained by The Times. “The document has undergone substantial modifications and contains significant deletions of information that, in some instances, alter the conclusions originally presented.”
A July email thread reviewed by The Times shows that the LAFD formed a “crisis management workgroup” to deal with concerns about how the after-action report would be received.
“The primary goal of this workgroup is to collaboratively manage communications for any critical public relations issue that may arise. The immediate and most pressing crisis is the Palisades After Action Report,” LAFD Assistant Chief Kairi Brown wrote in an email to eight other people.
“With significant interest from media, politicians, and the community, it is crucial that we present a unified response to anticipated questions and concerns,” Brown wrote. “By doing so, we can ensure our messaging is clear and consistent, allowing us to create our own narrative rather than reactive responses.”
Hudley Hayes, who previously served on the L.A. Unified school board, said she did not think “there was any critical material removed” from the final report.
She said she noticed only small differences, such as “mistakes” being changed to “challenges,” and the removal of firefighters’ names.
She added that she does not know who ordered the changes disclosed by The Times — and despite her oversight role, is “not particularly” interested in finding out.
“Our job is to take the report that we have in front of us. Our job is to make sure those recommendations that came to us from a public report are taken care of,” she said. “You’re asking me political questions.”
Pringle is a former Times staff writer.
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