Officials are probing the area near where a small New Year’s Day fire broke out for clues about what started the deadly Palisades Fire, which has grown since last week to more than 23,000 acres and devastated the Pacific Palisades neighborhood.
At the start of the new year, firefighters used a water-dropping helicopter to snuff out a blaze that began a few hours earlier near Skull Rock, a popular hiking destination on the Temescal Ridge trail above the Palisades.
Some residents wonder whether parts of that fire survived and set off the Palisades fire, which began on January 7.
“Now, what that all means, I don’t know,” Darrin Hurwitz, who was hiking in the area when the second fire broke out, told The Los Angeles Times. “Could it be possible that there were still some embers that weren’t out and the winds were kind of rustling them up?”
Past fires, including the 1991 Oakland Hills fire and the 2023 Maui fire continued after previous blazes were thought to be contained.
Areas around where the Palisades fire began, including Skull Rock and Via La Costa Street, remain closed to the public.
The area is littered with shattered electrical equipment, blackened trees, charred utility poles, and litter from recent visitors, all of which might suggest more information about how the Palisades fire began.
“We are looking at every angle,” Dominic Choi, assistant Los Angeles police chief, said on Monday, adding that “there has been no definitive determination that it is arson” that started the Palisades fire.
On Monday, elite federal fire investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrived in Los Angeles to probe the cause of the blaze.
Since it began around 10:30am on the 7th, the Palisades fire has burned 23,713 acres. It is 17 percent contained, according to Cal Fire.
In addition to probing the cause of the fire, officials are scrutinizing why fire hydrants ran dry as firefighters battled the Los Angeles fires, and whether more extensive brush clearing and controlled burns before this month’s fires would’ve prevented some of the risk.
Republicans in Congress have been highly critical of California’s wildfire preparedness and response, and have suggested they might add conditions to future disaster aid to the state.
