Almost a full year after a fire in the Pacific Palisades burned more than 6,000 homes and killed 12 people, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) still has not released his administration’s report on the disaster, and last week, we learned that the Los Angeles Fire Department’s report was so altered by city officials that the author disowned it.
Nine months after the fire was finally contained, the LAFD finally released its after-action report. The same day the report was finally released to the public, the report’s author, Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, emailed the fire chief informing him that the version released to the public was different from what he originally submitted and that he “must respectfully decline to endorse it in its current form.”
“The document has undergone substantial modifications and contains significant deletions of information that, in some instances, alter the conclusions originally presented,” Cook wrote. “While I fully understand the need to address potential liability concerns … the current version appears highly unprofessional and inconsistent with our established standards.”…