History Book: A recipe for disaster

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, the one year anniversary of one of the most destructive wildfires in California history. The Pacific Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed nearly 40,000 acres in just three weeks.

REICHARD: A year later, recovery efforts are still ongoing, and investigators are uncovering new information about what caused it. WORLD’s Emma Eicher has the story.

EMMA EICHER: It was a Tuesday morning in Southern California. January 7th, a year ago. About 50 miles west of L.A., a plume of smoke rose from California's Santa Monica mountains.

In the Pacific Palisades neighborhood along the coast, a man and his sister were enjoying a cup of tea, when she looked out the window, and screamed, Fire!

LIBONATI: It was a half-acre of smoke. And then 10 minutes later, it was 20 acres of smoke.

Nic Libonati spoke with News 3 Las Vegas, saying he called 9-11 as the blaze left behind a black burn scar of disintegration.

It was just the beginning.

KEELEY: Once the fire got into the urban environment, and once it ignited a home, those homes spread the fires at an incredible rate.

I got in touch with Jon Keeley of the U.S. Geological Survey. He’s a research scientist who studies wildfires. Keeley blames a combination of factors that led to this point.

KEELEY: We had nine months of drought which dried out the vegetation. We had extreme winds, which were unusual, but not unique. And then we had a human ignition, which is always related to these fire events.

In the afternoon, the embers settled onto houses, signalling the next, most devastating stage.

KEELEY: Then it was really an urban conflagration. It was the urban environment that drove these fires, the fuels that ended up destroying so many homes and lives. The fuels were the homes themselves.

Massive red and orange flames ravaged the neighborhoods, while thousands fled their homes.

SOUND: [House burning]

The fire spread through Malibu, the Pacific Palisades and the community of Altadena. Firefighters took to the sky in helicopters to dump water, while those on the ground fought a losing battle.

SOUND: [Helicopters]

Audio here from CBS 8 San Diego.

REPORTER: One of the things we noticed, it would just be a single line of houses on one side of the block, the first one would go, and the wind would keep pushing it. It was just like candlesticks, side by side.

Three weeks later, the last flames flickered out. 16,000 structures reduced to ash. Firefighters and civilians nursing burns and other injuries. Many residents died—31 by official count, but some scientists estimated hundreds.

The evacuation orders were lifted, but for most people, there was nothing to go back to.

PISTOTNIK: I can’t even put this into words …

Laura Pistotnik looked around at what used to be her house in the Pacific Palisades. It was only blackened rubble. Audio from CBS Sunday Morning.

PISTOTNIK: I’m just sick and numb. That’s the two words I will say.

One year later, many houses are still a pile of debris. The federal government promised to help rebuild, but cleanup has been slow.

AYLING: There’s nobody here, either, it’s the eeriest part about it, it’s like it’s empty …

In October of 2025, travel YouTuber Alexander Ayling walked through the Palisades neighborhoods. He found signs claiming hazardous materials had been removed. Whether that cleanup was complete, or only partial, was unclear. Ayling’s video shows remaining heaps of rubble and ash scattered nearby.

AYLING: Why aren’t there people working to clear this up, 8 months later?

Still, the remnants of many houses were hauled away, but very few have been rebuilt. Challenges range from labor costs and insurance disputes to government red tape.

November marked the first home rebuilt after the fires. And that home isn’t meant as a place to live, it’s just a model property for future projects.

Now, there’s a federal investigation into the L.A. Fire Department. ABC7 reported this a month ago:

ABC7: New details this morning of the Palisades Fire investigation. The Los Angeles time reports federal prosecutors have served the L.A. Fire Department with a subpoena for firefighter text messages.

In late December, those text messages were handed over in the courtroom. They revealed in detail the days leading up to the fires.

On January 1st, firefighters put out a blaze in the Santa Monica Mountains. Then, Battalion Chief Mario Garcia ordered the firefighters to pack up their hoses, even though the ground was still smoldering.

Fire Department Chief Deputy Joe Everett insisted that the New Year’s fire was mopped up. And he said it couldn’t have caused the Palisades fire days later. Here’s Everett in an interview with ABC7.

INTERVIEWER: Should those hoses have been kept in place longer, should firefighters have been checking on that burn scar longer?

EVERETT: Well, I mean, in retrospect, I think that yes.

Investigators questioned why some safety measures weren’t followed. The LAFD knew about the wind conditions and drought, but they didn’t send fire engines to high-risk areas.

The LAFD also delayed sending more firefighters until the fire was burning out of control.

Fire Chief Kristin Crowley defended her actions, saying the LAFD lacked resources. In February, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass fired Crowley.

NBCLA asked the mayor for the reason behind the sacking.

BASS: It was just, she was just absolutely not scapegoated, I would never do that. But it is important for us to understand what happened.

Wildfire researcher Keeley says he believes the weather conditions were the main drivers behind the fires, not human error.

KEELEY: When you have 80 mile per hour winds blowing fire through an urban environment. It's an extremely difficult situation. So it seemed to me, watching this event, that it was not something that was going to be easily controlled.

But some things can be controlled. New evidence continues to reveal the scale of executive failure. And that may prove crucial in preventing such destruction in the future.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Eicher.

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