Dive Brief:
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A $10 billion class action lawsuit filed July 7 accuses the city of Los Angeles and five government entities of negligence and mismanagement of public lands and utilities that led to the outbreak of the Palisades Fire.
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The lawsuit accuses the government of “failures of epic proportions,” claiming its inability to provide water and power during the fire and “negligence” in maintaining public lands caused, exacerbated and fomented the fire.
- Also last week, 3,300 Palisades Fire victims filed an amended complaint in a lawsuit filed in January, alleging Los Angeles “ignored its own brush clearance ordinances and overgrown brush on City-owned vacant lots,” contributing to the fire’s rapid spread, and “tried to cover up its responsibility for causing the worst urban conflagration in the City’s history,” according to a press release.
Dive Insight:
The Palisades Fire, the first of several wildfires that erupted in the Los Angeles area in January, burned 23,700 acres, caused 12 fatalities, destroyed 6,831 structures and damaged 973 structures.
“While our first responders did an incredible job of fighting an unprecedented set of circumstances due to the hurricane force winds, communication issues, infrastructure challenges and other issues that made their jobs even more difficult, the public has many questions about the state of communication and water infrastructure, including the procedures used for evacuations, firefighting processes and the decisions made regarding repopulation,” a motion for an independent review of the January fires, filed by Los Angeles County Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Kathryn Barger, states.
The California Superior Court for Los Angeles County has appointed a group of counsel to coordinate individual lawsuits that have been filed against the city of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and other government entities regarding the Palisades Fire.
The amended complaint filed on July 9 alleges new evidence based on text messages and other communications obtained through the California Public Records Act shows the LA Department of Water and Power failed to perform inspections of the Santa Ynez Reservoir that caused it to be empty during the fire and failed to de-energize power lines after the fire started.
“The failures of the City of Los Angeles were monumental and were directly responsible for the destruction of thousands of homes and loss of life in the Palisades Fire,” Alexander Robertson, co-liaison plaintiffs’ counsel, said in a statement. “As if this destruction was not horrible enough, it appears that the City was more worried about protecting its image than protecting the residents of Pacific Palisades.”
Lawyers for Justice, which filed the July 7 lawsuit against the California Natural Resources Agency, California State Parks, the city of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, and Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, said in a press release that the suit seeks “to use class action procedures to streamline the pursuit of justice on behalf of all similarly affected individuals, as opposed to filing and joining of individual cases under joinder rules.”
In a July 7 statement marking six months since the fires, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the city is leading “the fastest recovery in state history” and creating “clear and supportive pathways for homeowners to rebuild.”
