Shortly after 8 p.m. on Jan. 7, when wildfires first scorched into Los Angeles, firefighters called for help to save three burning houses. The dispatcher replied that there was no one to send, then ordered them to abandon the homes to help with the main brush fire that had spread to over 1,200 acres. All three houses—and much of the surrounding neighborhood—eventually burned down, satellite images show.
"We have no additional companies to give you," the dispatcher told the leader of Fire Engine 275, according to audio leaked by a Los Angeles Fire Department watchdog Instagram account and first reported by RedState. "No additional companies to give your structure fires. We will attach you to the brush incident."
The episode highlights chronic staffing issues that have plagued the department for years. Just two months before the wildfires struck, fire department chief Kristin Crowley warned that the city staffed about half as many firefighters as it needed. Mayor Karen Bass’s administration scrubbed the memo over the weekend, soon after the New York Times reported on it. And in December, Crowley warned that Bass’s $7 million in cuts to the department's overtime budget "severely limited" the city’s response to wide scale emergencies, including wildfires.
The same night as the leaked dispatch, all the available water tanks in the Palisades were emptied, and 200, or one-fifth, of the area’s hydrants went dry, according to city officials.
The leader of Fire Engine 275 told the dispatcher two of the three homes burning on Jan. 7 were "fully involved," meaning that the structures were engulfed in fire. He said he needed multiple engines for backup.
"We’ve got at least three structures that are starting to take off," he said, adding that his crew hadn’t started fighting the fire yet but had a hose out.
The dispatcher checked with the incident commander for the Palisades brush fire, then said, "We have no additional companies to give to you." She told Engine 275 to abandon the burning houses to help with the Palisades brush fire.
More than a week after that incident, Los Angeles leaders are still dogged by criticisms over the firefighter shortage on the first day of the fires. At a Wednesday press conference, Bass refused to answer questions about her involvement in an alleged delay in deploying extra firefighters the day the blazes broke out, when she was in Ghana at a cocktail party following the country's presidential inauguration. She deferred instead to Crowley, who said the department had done all it could in the face of wind and fire warnings, without knowing where the blazes would break out.
Los Angeles firefighter union chief Freddy Escobar recently backed up Crowley’s warnings about understaffing. Some 3,400 firefighters serve Los Angeles, a city of nearly 4 million people, he wrote in a Saturday USA Today op-ed.
City leaders were well aware of this problem. As city council members weighed Bass’s proposed budget cuts for the fire department last May, public safety committee chair Monica Rodriguez noted staffing levels hadn’t recovered since they were cut in the 2008 recession. Crowley told city council members that her hiring priority was for emergency medical responders, since "82 percent of what we do" is related to medical needs.