One year after the LA fires, California still hasn’t learned its lesson

One year ago this week, the Palisades Fire erupted in the hills above Los Angeles, killing a dozen people and destroying nearly 7,000 homes and businesses. It became L.A.’s worst urban wildfire catastrophe. Governor Gavin Newsom blamed climate change. But, evidence now emerging from lawsuits filed on behalf of victims tells a different story — one in which California’s own environmental policies helped transform a tiny, containable brush fire into an inferno. Federal investigators have determined that the Palisades Fire was a "holdover fire" — a rekindling of a small brush fire on New Year’s Eve that firefighters quickly contained. For six days, the fire smoldered underground in root systems on state parkland, waiting for the Santa Ana winds to arrive. When they did, the results were catastrophic.

Why wasn’t the fire fully extinguished? And why did no one monitor the burn scar as the National Weather Service issued its most extreme fire-danger warnings? The answer lies in California State Parks’ own policies — policies that, according to court filings, "put plants over people." Documents obtained through public records requests reveal that just weeks before the fire, California State Parks completed a Wildfire Management Plan for Topanga State Park that designated large zones as "avoidance areas" to protect endangered plant species and Native American archaeological sites.

Within these areas, normal firefighting tactics are restricted. No heavy equipment. No retardant. No standard mop-up operations to extinguish smoldering hotspots "without the presence of an archeologist" or resource specialist. The plan’s stated preference: "let Topanga State Park burn in a wildfire event." Text messages between State Parks employees during the initial fire show them coordinating to limit firefighting impacts to protect endangered plants. "There is an endangered plant population and a cultural site in the immediate area," one official texted. "Can you make sure no suppression impacts at skull rock please," another later replied, referring to a site near the fire’s point of origin.

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When a State Parks employee asked a fire department heavy equipment supervisor about deploying bulldozers, he replied: "Heck no that area is full of endangered plants. I would be a real idiot to ever put a dozer in that area."

He was right to be cautious. Damaging endangered plants, even while doing fire-safety work, could come along with severe consequences. In 2020, Los Angeles paid $1.9 million in fines for damaging the same species of plant — Braunton’s milkvetch — while replacing power poles to improve fire safety.

This is California’s environmental bureaucracy in action: a system so tangled in procedural requirements that firefighters must navigate botanical checklists while homes burn. Evidence produced in the lawsuit even suggests that a State Parks employee instructed firefighters to cover portions of their containment line with brush after the blaze was declared contained — effectively undoing the firebreaks meant to stop its spread. 

But, the dysfunction doesn’t end at firefighting restrictions. California has also failed to address the underlying fuel loads that make these fires so catastrophic in the first place. In 2021, following the state’s worst fire year on record, Governor Newsom announced a plan to treat one million acres annually by 2025 — clearing brush, thinning forests and conducting prescribed burns to reduce dangerous fuel buildups. After decades of inadequate land management, California’s landscapes had become dangerously overgrown, packed with vegetation that easily ignites into megafires. Five years later, the state’s own data show it falling far short. According to California’s Interagency Treatment Dashboard, roughly 730,000 acres were treated in 2024 — well below the million-acre target. Prescribed fire reached only about 189,000 acres against a 400,000-acre goal.

Meanwhile, wildfires continue to outpace treatment by a wide margin. Over the past decade, California has averaged more than 1.3 million acres burned annually. In the catastrophic 2020 and 2021 fire seasons alone, some 6.8 million acres burned — roughly ten times what was treated over the same period. Southern California, where the Palisades Fire ignited, has been particularly neglected.

What’s holding California back? The same regulatory morass that hamstrings firefighting. Air quality rules restrict when prescribed burns can occur. Liability concerns deter private landowners from clearing brush. Environmental reviews delay projects for years. The very laws designed to protect California’s environment make it harder to protect Californians from environmental catastrophe.

Californians deserve better. They deserve a state that clears fuels before they become infernos, that lets firefighters fight fires without first consulting bureaucrats and that values human lives and homes at least as much as endangered plants.

Until then, the next catastrophe is not a matter of if, but when.