Looking for what started the Los Angeles wildfire

CNN
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A week after wind-whipped wildfires began their deadly rampage through Southern California, details of acreage burned, structures destroyed and fatalities are routinely updated on a state website dedicated to tracking the devastation.

But one category regarding each fire remains unchanged: The cause.

Amid speculation, rumors and media reports about how the fires may have started, the official ruling for each fire is “under investigation.”

Fire experts and arson investigators interviewed by CNN said it could be weeks, months or even longer before they know exactly how the fires started.

“This is going to be a monumental task,” said Mike Vergon, a retired Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives fire investigator who worked on the agency’s National Response Team, which specializes in complex investigations of large fires and explosions.

Figuring out what caused a fire, experts say, is a painstaking, time-consuming process.

“It’s boring. It’s dirty. It’s not fun,” said Ed Nordskog, a retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s investigator and arson profiler.

About 95% of fires in California are human-caused, whether through an arson fire, a downed power line or a backyard barbecue or fireworks display gone awry, Cal Fire officials say. Determining the details of how a particular fire started can have far-reaching consequences. Investigators’ findings can result in fines, court settlements, and even jail time, depending on the circumstances. In 2019, for example, Pacific Gas & Electric reached an $11 billion settlement with insurers for claims stemming from the 2017 wildfires in Northern California and the 2018 Camp Fire.

Investigations can also provide invaluable lessons, said Tommy Sing Sr., a veteran fire investigator and president of Quest Fire Analysis.

“Having an understanding of how the fire started can give you guidance on how to reduce the risk of it happening again,” Sing said.

Current members of the ATF National Response Team began conducting an initial assessment in Los Angeles on Monday and will take the lead role in the investigation into the Palisades fire, which has killed at least eight people and burned more than 5,000 structures. It ranks as the second most destructive fire in Southern California history—only behind the nearby Eaton Fire. Containment efforts on both wildfires continue.

Tim Jones, an ATF assistant chief, said 15 members of the task force were assigned to the Palisades Fire after a request from local officials to determine the “cause and origin.”

He said the team includes agents with advanced degrees in forensics and other science-based fields who bring a “thoughtful, analytical” approach to unraveling some of ATF’s most difficult investigations. Already this year, members of the team were sent to New Orleans after the New Year terrorist attacks and to Las Vegas in response to the Cybertruck explosion outside the Trump hotel.

The timeline for the Palisades Fire investigation is hard to predict, Jones said, but noted that the agency’s final report on the 2023 Maui fire didn’t come out until more than a year after the fire.

Until the investigation is complete, Jones said, investigators could be expected to be “tight-lipped” about what they found.

“We’re not making any initial assessments,” he said. “We are waiting until we are able to get all the evidence.”

The Palisades fire began on the morning of January 7th. Six days earlier, there had been another fire in the same vicinity, according to satellite images and broadcast footage analyzed by CNN. That fire had been reported contained within hours by local firefighters after growing to about eight hectares, according to alarms from the LA Fire Department, who noted that a team would be working to ensure no flare-up occurred.

The proximity of the two fires has raised questions about whether wind could have reignited smoldering debris from New Year’s Eve fireworks to spark the Palisades fire, as reported by San Francisco Chronicle and that Washington Post.

“In terms of possibility, it certainly could have happened,” Luca Carmignani, a professor at San Diego State University who has studied wildfires, told CNN. However, Carmignani cautioned against drawing any conclusions without a thorough investigation.

At a press conference Sunday, Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said, “we don’t have any information that there are any connections” between the two fires. She added that she was confident that “every single detail” would be investigated.

A law enforcement source told CNN on Monday that there was “no leading theory at this time” about the cause of the Palisades fire.

Across town in Altadena, residents reported seeing flames under an electrical transmission tower shortly before the Eaton fire broke out on January 7.

“It was burning bright and it was the bottom of the tower on fire,” Altadena resident Jeffrey Ku told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday.

Los Angeles Times Sunday quoted an investigator with Cal Fire said the area around the hillside transmission tower was off limits because it was under investigation as “the start of the Eaton fire.”

Edison International, an electric company, issued a news release Sunday, stating that a preliminary analysis of its live lines found “no outages or operational/electrical anomalies in the 12 hours prior to the reported start time of the fire until more than one hour after the reported start time of the fire.”

The utility also acknowledged in its statement that it discovered a downed power line in the area of ​​the Hurst fire in the San Fernando Valley, north of downtown Los Angeles, but “does not know if the observed damage occurred before or after the start of the fire.”

Several former fire investigators interviewed by CNN said wildfire investigations typically begin with the painstaking work of building a timeline, interviewing witnesses, listening to early 911 calls, looking at before and after images from satellite imagery and analyzing weather data.

Dixon Robin, another retired ATF fire investigator, said even crime scenes that at first appear to be devoid of clues can yield important evidence upon closer inspection.

“Surprisingly – and fortunately most arsonists don’t know this – there is still a lot of evidence being left behind. Even if it is broken and damaged to some extent, there will be evidence. They can even find the remains of matches in forest fires, for example,” said Robin.

One of the reasons investigations take as long as they do, Robin said, is the process of elimination investigators follow in determining a cause and assigning blame.

“They have to go through all the hypotheses about what could have happened and one by one eliminate them” until they arrive at one that is supported by evidence, he said.

Nordskog, the retired detective, said the same high winds that can lead to widespread destruction in wildfires can also help investigators determine where a given fire started by pushing the fire in a way that shows a clear path.

“If you look from high ground, a drone or an airplane down on the burn site,” he said, “it will point a big black finger back to the origin.”

Scott Fischer, a former federal fire investigator, said that once investigators determine the origin and cause of a fire, they turn to the question of who is responsible and whether any crime was committed.

“It could go on for a while,” he said.

Proving beyond a reasonable doubt that someone committed arson can be extremely challenging, Fischer said.

He said investigators will look for “footprints, tire tracks, cigarette butts” — anything that definitively links a suspect to the scene. But the reality, he said, is “it comes down to circumstantial evidence in many cases.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta told CNN on Monday that he did not know whether the investigations into the fires would become criminal, but added that “there are some indications that arson is a possibility that we have to be open to. ”

He added: “We have to be patient. We have to make sure that we do a thorough investigation of all the facts and see where they lead.”

Local authorities have made some arrests in connection with arson in recent days, but have not shared any specific information suggesting that these people caused larger fires. For example, Los Angeles Police Department Cmdr. Steve Embrich said one suspect was arrested on an outstanding arson warrant after officers responded to a call Sunday of someone using a barbecue lighter to start a fire, while another was arrested Monday after authorities responded to a call that someone had set brush on fire nearby.

Robin, who has been following the Southern California fires in the news, said he has yet to see any evidence of how any of these fires started.

“My hope is that they have a lot more information than the public knows about and don’t spend a lot of time chasing ghosts,” he said.

Sing, the veteran arson investigator, said in some cases there simply isn’t enough evidence to establish a cause or hold someone responsible.

“They are not always resolved,” he said.

CNN’s Paul P. Murphy and Avery Schmitz contributed to this report.