Firefighters only responded 44 minutes after a prominent Pacific Palisades resident called 911 on Tuesday morning, January 7, by which time the Palisades Fire had begun burning out of control in high winds, a local resident says.
A local attorney, Michael Valentine, who has worked in the Harris-Biden administration, spotted the fire near his property and called for help. But as Breitbart News reported, firefighters were not pre-deployed, for budget reasons.
The result was a crucial delay in the firefighting response. NewsNation reported on Tuesday:
A Pacific Palisades resident says the fire that ravaged his neighborhood could have been far less devastating.
Michel Valentine, a former U.S. attorney for Vice President Kamala Harris, spoke exclusively to NewsNation about watching the fire unfold in Pacific Palisades and what he believes was an inadequate response time.
Valentine, a resident from high up in the Palisades, watched this unfold from his home and began recording last Tuesday morning. His wife was walking their dog and called at 10:29 a.m. last Tuesday after first seeing smoke in the area. Forty-four minutes later, a helicopter first dumped water on the fire.
As Breitbart News has been reporting since January 7, the likely — though not confirmed — cause of the blaze was the smoldering remnants of an earlier fire, caused by someone setting off fireworks on New Year’s Eve. Locals have noted the likely origin of the fire at a popular viewpoint on the Skull Rock hiking trail above Pacific Palisades, known as the “Hidden Little Buddha Figure.”
I've seen video footage from residents (which I am not permitted to share) showing the early origins of the #PalisadesFire near a hiking spot called the "Hidden Little Buddha Figure" (find it on Google Maps). Great views, but attracted nuisances like pot smoking, fireworks, etc. https://t.co/tUNUuJO2PB
— Joel Pollak (@joelpollak) January 15, 2025
Breitbart News reported earlier this week that firefighters had not been pre-deployed to the area ahead of the extreme wind event in Los Angeles — which had been predicted for days — because local authorities, faced with budget cuts, did not want to pay overtime.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
