Top Los Angeles officials edited a public report on the city’s response to deadly fires that burned through Pacific Palisades to paint their handling of the crisis in a more favorable light.
Multiple drafts of the report assessing the city’s handling of the fires were “edited to soften language and reduce explicit criticism of department leadership,” Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Jaime Moore told the city’s Board of Fire Commissioners on Tuesday. The LAFD’s final “after-action” report was released in late October 2025 and was overseen by then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva.
Mayor Karen Bass also requested “refinements” to a working draft of the report that was sent to her office in August 2025, Fire Commission President Genethia Hudley Hayes told the Los Angeles Times, citing Villanueva.
Hayes said she was satisfied that no “critical material” was altered in the LAFD’s final report. She raised concerns, however, about the mayor’s office possibly seeking to influence the report, telling the outlet that in her long career in civic roles, she had learned that words such as “refinements” could mean troubling changes to a government report, made for the purpose of hiding facts.
Moore apologized for the editing this week, saying it occurred prior to his appointment as LAFD chief in late October 2025.
“I can assure you that nothing of this sort will ever again happen while I am fire chief,” he said.
The flames that encompassed the Palisades last year were part of the Los Angeles fires that caused billions in damage, torched thousands of structures, and killed 31 people in January 2025.
The Lachman Fire, which ignited on Jan. 1, 2025, is believed to have sparked the Palisades fire on Jan. 7, 2025.
Questions surrounding city officials’ handling of the fires, including at the LAFD, have continued, as Justice Department officials have said the Lachman blaze was “deeply seated in dense vegetation and roots, and continued to burn undetected until catastrophic weather ensued, resulting in the Palisades fire.”
The LAFD’s after-action report makes scant investigative reference to the Lachman fire, though it does record a comment from “the Captain on duty, stating the Lachman Fire started up again” as firefighters began responding to the first reports of the Palisades fire.
That reference was deleted in one draft, then restored in the final version of the report.
Bass’s office, which faced questions following the fires about why some of the state’s largest water reservoirs sat empty when the disaster sparked, and why the LAFD’s budget was cut shortly before the crisis occurred, said this week that the city “did not discuss the Lachman fire because it was not part of the report.”
“The report was written and edited by the Fire Department,” spokeswoman Clara Karger wrote in an email to the LA Times. “We did not red-line, review every page or review every draft of the report. We did not discuss the Lachman Fire because it was not part of the report.”
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The most significant changes across seven drafts of the report involved the LAFD’s deployment decisions before the fire, as the wind warnings became increasingly dire, according to records obtained by the outlet.
“In one instance, LAFD officials removed language saying that the decision not to fully staff up and pre-deploy all available crews and engines ahead of the extreme wind forecast ‘did not align’ with the department’s policy and procedures during red flag days. Instead, the final report said that the number of engine companies rolled out ahead of the fire ‘went above and beyond the standard LAFD pre-deployment matrix,’” the outlet reported.