What caused the Palisades Fire? The location of the ignition point holds clues

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The ridge high above Los Angeles is full of clues. There are broken pieces of electrical equipment and a madrone grove blackened by fire. Police tape is stretched around a section of sandy soil now mixed with ash.

Investigators have set their sights on these rocky bluffs with sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean as the starting point for the Palisades Fire, the inferno that has destroyed at least 5,000 homes and businesses and killed at least eight people.

A recent visit by New York Times reporters to the site — near the “crime scene,” as Los Angeles Police Department officers stationed nearby described it — suggested a number of sometimes contradictory possibilities for the crime scene’s origins there fire.

Charred wooden electricity pylons lie on the ground. Some of the burned chaparral came from an earlier fire that firefighters thought they had extinguished on New Year’s Day, nearly a week before the Palisades Fire broke out. And there is evidence of recent visitors to the area around Skull Rock, the eerily shaped boulder that attracts hikers and teenage partygoers whose discarded beer bottles are left in a pile of broken glass.

The answer to the question of what caused one of the most destructive firestorms in Los Angeles may remain elusive, even for investigators. The yellow caution tape flapping in the wind near Skull Rock lies hundreds of meters up a steep slope from the zone where a New York Times analysis of satellite images and witness photos suggests the ignition point may have been.

The area is now deserted. The sand and rocky slopes are colorless and moon-like, as if the fire had burned away every trace of chlorophyll. It’s a far cry from the pre-fire days, when hiking trails in the area were lined with reeds and drought-tolerant bushes.

The fire ripped through the steep slopes on both sides of the Temescal Ridge Trail, which runs north-south, roughly the same direction as the fierce winds that hit the Palisades Fire shortly after it ignited on Tuesday, January 7 , shortly before 10 a.m., driven: 30 p.m

An hour earlier, Ron Giller, an attorney who lives in The Enclave, an area of ​​Pacific Palisades near where the fire began, was hiking with a friend through a patch of land that had caught fire on New Year’s Day. Residents believe that a stray firecracker may have started the fire.

The New Year’s fire was reported just after midnight and burned eight hectares of land before firefighters were able to bring it fully under control. Some crew members remained to watch for outbreaks.

The site of the New Year’s fire is still scarred and blackened and lies less than 30 meters from the houses to the west – some of which have now been destroyed.

On the morning the fire ignited on January 7, Mr Giller said he saw something resembling smoke or dust in the area. “It looked like smoke there, but there were no flames,” he said in an interview. “It just raised a question in me. What is that? I thought, could this thing still be active? But it seemed unlikely, you know – could there still be smoke from a fire that started six days ago? That didn’t make sense to me.”

Some of the deadliest wildfires of the past century were blazes that firefighters thought they had extinguished, only to see the remnants flare into an inferno. These include the Oakland firestorm in 1991, which killed 25 people, and the wildfire on the Hawaiian island of Maui in 2023, which killed 102 people.

Investigators concluded that the Maui fire originated from the smoldering remnants of a fire near a residential area several hours ago, possibly from burning material that was buried underground until the wind uncovered it.

Researchers have found that fires in plant roots or other organic material can smolder for days before conditions cause them to break out again.

Mr. Giller and his friend Alan Feld weren’t the only ones exploring the Palisades hills last week before the fire. The panoramic views from the ridge often attract hikers from the area and beyond.

During their walk that day, Mr. Feld said, they saw a few people sitting on Skull Rock.

“And one of us even said, ‘I hope they don’t smoke or something in these winds,'” Mr. Feld said.

A video posted on social media this morning shows a group of young men near Skull Rock, mostly dressed in sneakers and gym shorts, one with a portable speaker. Clips posted by a member of the group begin with the men running along a path next to a rock as a faint cloud of smoke rises from the hillside above them. The men, still running, express concern about smelling smoke and then seeing a fire quickly moving toward them.

Another clip shows the same men a few minutes later looking back as the fire continued to grow and smoke rose into the sky.

“Dude, that’s exactly where we were,” says one. “We were literally right there,” says another.

The man who posted the video initially agreed to speak with the Times but then stopped responding to messages. His account on X appears to have been removed. At this time there is no evidence that any of the men were responsible for lighting the fire; The videos don’t show her smoking.

As the latest fire began to spread on January 7, local residents watched in horror as it took hold in the parched grassland and then leapt down the hillside, fueled by the rising winds. They called 911 and packed evacuation supplies in case they had to flee. At this point – around 10:30 a.m. – the flames were towering over the landscape, according to photos taken by a local resident. Just half an hour later, the fire had already spread across much of the slope to the houses below.

Firefighters rushed to the scene on the ground and in the air, and one firefighter reported to crews that the fire started “just below the old burn scar” – from New Year’s Day The fire could break out and reach neighboring houses within minutes.

“It’s heading straight toward Palisades,” he said on the radio. “This thing is going to have a good run.”

At least one attorney investigating the fire investigated whether a downed utility line may have started the fire, as power lines run north and south along much of the Temescal Ridge Trail. California has a long history of catastrophic fires caused by downed power lines, and early images of the other deadly fire that broke out in the Los Angeles area last week – the Eaton Fire – show flames blazing beneath power lines.

Along the trail near where the Palisades fire started, The Times found broken pieces of power lines, including what appeared to be part of a lightning rod. But the nearest overhead line was about half a mile north. This line, which runs from the trail down into the neighborhood, was heavily damaged by the fire, but witness photos show it was still intact shortly after the fire started.

The poles along this route have had a turbulent recent history. Many of them date back to the 1930s, and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power initiated a project in 2019 to replace some of them with stronger metal structures.

The project stalled after environmental officials said the agency damaged 183 small shrubs known as brown-toned milkvetch, an endangered species.

The department agreed to pay a fine in 2020 and received approval to resume work, saying the project was “essential to our wildfire mitigation plan.” But the project does not appear to have progressed.

The Times’ review of the hilltop showed many damaged and downed utility poles along the northbound path – an area ravaged by fires, but only a day after the fire began.

Investigators made it clear that it could take some time before firm conclusions can be drawn about the cause of the fire.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which takes over, took more than a year to deliver its conclusions on the Maui fire.

“We are looking at all aspects,” Los Angeles Police Deputy Chief Dominic Choi said Monday of the fires burning across the region. He said arson had not been ruled out in any of them. In the case of the Palisades fire, he added, “There is no definitive determination that it was arson.”

At the moment, the entire area surrounding the investigation site is eerily empty. Neighborhoods near the trail were evacuated and dozens of homes were razed; — The only signs of life are a few fire engines and the occasional police patrol.

Further down the slopes, towards the sea, there is complete devastation. Entire neighborhoods have been razed to the ground, their subdivisions reduced to a grid of ash.

Christiaan Triebert, Ivan Penn, Danny Hakim And Claire Moses contributed to reporting.