WAPO: Here’s what we know about the origin of the Palisades Fire - The Wash…
Brianna SacksUpdated today at 8:39 p.m. ESTLOS ANGELES — About 30 minutes after the Palisades Fire started on Tuesday, the firefighters’ radio crackled: The flames were coming from a familiar sliver of a mountain ridge.
“The foot of the fire started real close to where the last fire was on New Year’s Eve,” said a Los Angeles County firefighter, according to a Washington Post review of archived radio transmissions.
“It looks like it’s going to make a good run,” one chimed into the dispatch.
The Post’s analysis of photos, videos, satellite imagery and radio communications, as well as interviews with witnesses, offers new evidence that the Palisades Fire started in the area where firefighters had spent hours using helicopters to knock down a blaze six days earlier.
Investigators from state and federal agencies descended on this area in recent days, interviewing residents and looking for evidence — including around the burn scar of the New Year’s Eve fire — of what sparked the blaze.
The Post’s analysis showed that the new fire started in the vicinity of the old fire, raising the possibility that the New Year’s Eve fire was reignited, which can occur in windy conditions, experts said.
Residents also told The Post and investigators on scene that firefighters’ response Tuesday was much slower than on New Year’s Eve — a view confirmed by radio transmissions.
