The hills of Pacific Palisades, overlooking Los Angeles, today offer a desolate and lunar landscape, ravaged by a fire which destroyed nearly 5,000 structures and caused the deaths of at least eight people. While authorities are working to elucidate the causes of this devastating fire, several hypotheses are being considered, as reported by a New York Times investigation.
According to the daily, investigators have isolated a specific area, near the Temescal Ridge hiking trail and the famous Skull Rock, as a possible starting point for the fire. On site, debris of electrical equipment, charred poles and traces of human visitation suggest different avenues. “We are looking at all avenues,” Dominic Choi, deputy chief of the Los Angeles police, told the newspaper, while specifying that no hypothesis, including arson, had yet been ruled out.
A resurgence of poorly extinguished fire?
The fire apparently started near a patch of chaparral (a local plant) which had already burned six days earlier, during a controlled fire on New Year’s Day. Some residents, including Ron Giller, a lawyer living in the neighborhood, remember seeing suspicious smoke that morning. “It looked like smoke, but there were no flames,” he told the New York Times. This testimony revives the hypothesis of a resurgence of a poorly extinguished fire, a phenomenon well known to experts, as shown by the Oakland fire in 1991 or that of Maui in 2023.
Among the possibilities considered, that of a spark caused by an electrical line attracts attention. Debris of lines and electrical equipment was found near the trail, including a lightning arrester component. However, according to analyzes by the New York Times, the nearest line was still intact shortly after the disaster began, and the damaged poles did not catch fire until a day later.
No avenue is yet excluded
These power lines, installed in the 1930s, were the subject of a modernization project launched in 2019 by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. However, this work was interrupted due to environmental concerns linked to a protected plant species, Braunton’s milkvetch. Although work had resumed in 2020, it appears that no significant progress has been made since.
Videos posted on social media also show groups of young people present at the scene shortly before the fire. Although their actions do not imply any direct responsibility, the authorities continue to explore all avenues, including that of human negligence. The author of the videos, initially contacted by New York Times journalists, did not respond and his account has since been deleted.
An investigation that could last more than a year
For now, the investigation remains open, led by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which could take several months, or even more than a year, before draw definitive conclusions. Meanwhile, the neighborhoods near the flashpoint remain deserted, emptied of their inhabitants and monitored by sporadic patrols.
Also read, our file on the fires in Los Angeles
The Pacific Palisades fire once again raises the issue of fire prevention in California and the modernization of electrical infrastructure. As high winds and extreme drought become major risk factors, authorities will need to learn lessons from this new disaster to prevent a repeat.
