A firefighter tasked with fighting the fire that preceded the deadly Palisades Fire in Los Angeles last year claimed in a sworn deposition that he expressed concern that it could reignite, but was brushed off by the fire captain.
Firefighter Scott Pike spoke on Jan. 30 in a deposition related to a lawsuit brought against the city by thousands of families affected by the Palisades fire last year. The blaze ultimately claimed the lives of at least 29 people, more than 18,000 structures were destroyed or damaged, and roughly tens of thousands of people were forced from their homes.
“I just feel like I saw something, I said something and to my best ability, I felt like we could have done more,” Pike said in the deposition.
Videos of the deposition were released by attorneys representing residents affected by the Palisades Fire as part of the ongoing investigation into the origins of the Lachman Fire, which flared up and became the Palisades Fire. It’s the first time LAFD personnel have spoken out — in their own words — about the events.
Pike said he was working overtime on Jan. 2, 2025, when he was told to help contain the Lachman Fire. He said at the time the fire did not have that name, and he only pieced together the pieces he was working on for that specific fire after the fact.
He said he was just following orders in responding to the fire, but noticed a lot of burned ground in the area.
“Sometimes that’s very fire-resistant for a reason,” Pike said, according to a transcript of the deposition shared with NBC News by the law firm representing the families in the case. “And I just noticed that it looked like the fire blew through there relatively fast. And there was a lot of unburnt fuel in the burn.”
He also said he noticed the fire was not fully extinguished while he was working on it, recalling at least one ash pit within the containment line.
“I could feel the heat coming off of it and I didn’t even want to use my gloved hand because it was hot,” Pike explained. “So I just kicked it with my boot to kind of expose it and there was like red hot like coals, what I believe to be the base of a bush or branches, that was still smoldering and I even heard crackling.”
But when he brought it to the attention of another firefighter, he said, he felt he was “blown off a little bit.”
He said he then alerted the on-scene captain — whose name he did not recall — that there were still hotspots in the area, which Pike said is “an alert to double check the whole area, and maybe we need to switch our tactics.”
“That’s not my job to overstep and tell him what to do,” Pike said, explaining that it is only his job to alert a captain that there are issues. “He earned that rank.”
Still, he said he wasn’t listened to. He added that he hasn’t spoken out on the day much so far because “it kind of sits heavy with me that nobody listened to me.”
That’s because days later, the Lachman Fire erupted into the Palisades Fire, which burned for weeks and became the most destructive fire in California history.
An adviser for L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who is facing her own lawsuit from the fire chief whom she removed during the fires, said the revelations from the deposition are “tremendously alarming.”
“For more than a year, Mayor Bass has been extremely public about her demand for transparency and accountability to inform ongoing Fire Department reforms, and because those affected deserve nothing less,” the statement said.
The lawsuit includes several defendants, including the State of California and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), Roger Behle, the lawyer representing the families in the case, said.
Marty Greenstein, a spokesperson for California State Parks punted responsibility of the fire cleanup to the Los Angeles City Fire Department.
He said the LAFD deemed the Lachman Fire contained just a few hours after it was started, which federal investigators have determined was started “intentionally on adjacent lands,” he said. He added that “the U.S. Attorney has indicated, firefighters responded and the fire smoldered underground.”
Behle called Pike’s deposition a game-changer in a statement to NBC News.
“The truth is now coming out, and it proves what we all knew: The Palisades Fire was avoidable,” Behle said. “The government failed the people of Pacific Palisades miserably. This can never happen again and we are going to see that it doesn’t.”
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