Months after the devastating Palisades fire, the head of the Los Angeles Fire Commission inquired about the Fire Department\u2019s long-awaited after-action report. <\/p>\n
Interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva said that a \u201cworking draft\u201d had been sent to Mayor Karen Bass\u2019 office, Genethia Hudley Hayes told The Times on Tuesday. <\/p>\n
In the conversation, which took place in mid-August or later, Villanueva said that the mayor\u2019s office had asked for \u201crefinements,\u201d but he did not say what they were, according to Hudley Hayes. <\/p>\n
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 \u201crefinements\u201d could mean troubling changes to a government report, made for the purpose of hiding facts. <\/p>\n
Earlier Tuesday, Fire Chief Jaime Moore, responding to the findings of a Times investigation<\/a>, acknowledged that the after-action report<\/a> had been edited to soften criticism of the LAFD leadership\u2019s handling of the Palisades fire.<\/p>\n The Times had previously reported that Hudley Hayes was concerned enough about possible edits that she sought advice from a deputy city attorney. <\/p>\n But Hudley Hayes\u2019 remarks Tuesday were her first public statements that her concerns stemmed from what she understood to be the mayor\u2019s office\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n 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 \u201cmaterial findings\u201d were not altered. <\/p>\n But her account raises questions about the mayor\u2019s role in revisions to the report that, as Moore conceded Tuesday, downplayed the city\u2019s failures in preparing for and responding to the fire, which killed 12 people and leveled much of the Palisades and surrounding areas. <\/p>\n On Tuesday, Bass\u2019 office did not immediately explain what the refinements were. <\/p>\n In an interview Wednesday lasting less than a minute, Bass told The Times that she did not work with the Fire Department on changes to the report, nor did the agency consult her about any changes.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only thing that I told them to do was I told them to talk to Matt Szabo about the budget and the funding, and that was it,\u201d she said, referring to the city\u2019s administrative officer. \u201cThat\u2019s a technical report. I\u2019m not a firefighter.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019s budget factored into the disaster.<\/p>\n \u201cThe report was written and edited by the Fire Department,\u201d the spokesperson, Clara Karger, said in an email last month. \u201cWe did not red-line, review every page or review every draft of the report.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019s deployment decisions before the fire, as the wind warnings became increasingly dire.<\/p>\n In one instance, LAFD officials removed language saying that the decision not to fully staff up and pre-deploy<\/a> all available crews and engines ahead of the extreme wind forecast \u201cdid not align\u201d with the department\u2019s policy and procedures during red flag days. Instead, the final report<\/a> said that the number of engine companies rolled out ahead of the fire \u201cwent above and beyond the standard LAFD pre-deployment matrix.\u201d<\/p>\n