You have to wonder how Los Angeles county fire officials sleep at night, given the string of failures that led to the massive conflagrations in Altadena and Pacific Palisades last January, leading to 31 people dying and tens of thousands of homes destroyed.

But given the lack of consequences thus far, they must be sleeping like babies.

The Los Angeles Times came out with two reports describing the idiocies of command would be firing offenses in any place other than a one-party blue city.

In Altadena, a consultant report from the city, noted that officials got alarmed warnings from firefighters in the field that houses were catching on fire in the western part of the neighborhood -- yet the "unified command" structure futzed around for three hours before telling the locals at 3:00 a.m. that they needed to evacuate. Quite a few homes had already burned down by the time they got around to getting the warning out.

This, the Times notes, was the historically black area of the neighborhood, which you'd think they might be sensitive to, but of course, they weren't. The white eastern half got its evacuation orders, but the black part had to wait three hours, and in that interim, people died. Seventeen out of 18 of the known deaths in the Altadena fire were in this part of town, which ought to put someone on the hot seat.

But the consultant report, for which the city paid $2 million, says it "was not intended to assign blame" you have to wonder why not. Seems that if firefighters are reporting homes on fire and it's during peak fire season, you hit the button and tell the locals to get the heck out on the double. This is pretty basic, and obviously, someone didn't do it. Did they not know how to do it? Were they sleeping on the job? Did someone demand they get written permission from the principal? It's strange that the consultants didn't actually find out.

Bureaucracy with multiple agencies in a "unified command" was blamed, and there was this kind of excuse-making from the consultant:

While the report was not intended to assign blame for the delayed evacuation alerts, he said that task could be challenging if officials decide to go that route. [McChrystal Group Shawn Tyrie] said the “vast majority” of communication the night of the fire was through radio calls, text messages or shared in person, with little notetaking.

“It’s difficult to go back and do a forensic audit of how was the decision-making actually made,” Tyrie said.

Why is this difficult and don't they get paid to sort out 'difficult'?

I guess if everyone is lying and covering up for their incompetence -- and getting away with it -- there's no finding out who was sleeping on the job while Altadena burned, is there?

The failure to warn residents to get out ought to be a firing offense right there, and it would be anywhere else, but there's just hemming and hawing about how they're improving every day. 

Here's an L.A. County Supervisor, Kathryn Barger, giving a chirpy statement to the Times in the aftermath of that report and another one by a different consultant:

Still, Barger said she believes the county is better prepared to respond to wildfires, given all that has been learned since January.

“I am,100%, confident that we are ready,” Barger said. “I do believe that the lessons learned have definitely ... [helped] to restructure from within an emergency management department that actually is going to meet the needs of the 10 million residents of L.A. County.”

As if an idiot like this would actually know.

Then there's the incompetence of fire officials in the Pacific Palisades / Malibu fire, which left at least 12 dead and thousands of million-dollar homes burned to the ground; still a charred wasteland owing to the city's failure to issue rebuilding permits. It wasn't just the failure to fill the reservoirs in the area, built for just this purpose, or the failure to maintain fire trucks and fire plugs, though those ought to be firing offenses, too, which thus far, they haven't been.

Firefighters in the field reported that a Jan. 1 fire in the vicinity, known as the Lachman fire, reportedly set by a bum, was still hot and smoldering when the fire battalion commander ordered the firemen to pack up and leave the area. They could see the smoke and flames and feel the heat, which was officially blamed on fires in an underground root system. They had infrared equipment and were not allowed to use it. The firemen protested fiercely about this, and left one hose (imagine carrying those heavy things up rocky canyon hillsides) as a precaution since they knew this thing would erupt again, and on Jan. 3 were told to take that down, too. Like, why?

By Jan. 7, that smoldering mess in high fire condition winds reignited into the Palisades fire, taking down the entire community.

The battalion commander who reportedly was on duty and thus issued the order to ignore the smoldering was some guy named Mario Garcia, and it appeared way down in the report.

He, of course, has been laying low and not talking to the press. He's even skipped commitments to community meetings. Wonder why.

Was it to avoid questions about that decisionmaking was based on? Was he a DEI hire who didn't know how fires work and who disdained the word of the white firefighters in the field? Did his commander block him, which might exonerate him, except that he should have gotten loud about it?

Why does he still have a job? 

This chirping from the man who seems to be Garcia's superior looks pretty skeevy:

On Jan. 16, then-LAFD Assistant Chief Everett for the West Bureau, which includes the Palisades, spoke at a community meeting and said he was out of town on New Year's, but was on the phone with the firefighters at the Lachman scene.

"That fire was dead out. If it is determined that was the cause, it would be a phenomenon," he said at that meeting.

Speaking with ABC7 months later, Everett said: "I had full faith and belief that they did a good job, and I do today. I stand by that word phenomenon."

Why was he out of town? Was he in Ghana with the mayor? Was he taking a vacay during a high fire warning? Why does this guy have a job?

The statement that he was confident the fire was dead-out is contradicted by the warnings sent by the firefighters themselves who were ordered to leave the smoldering mess instead of watch it, so this guy ought to really be on the hot seat -- at this point, he ought to be gone. This is basic stuff.

But he's there, answering questions glibly while others are slinking around and avoiding the public. The Los Angeles water chief, Janisse Quinones, who failed to fill the reservoirs, reportedly has expensive bodyguards now to ensure she has no encounters with an angry public. She too, ought to be gone.

But they're all still there, as is the big fish which stinks from the top, Mayor Karen Bass, who's fully invested in running for reelection next year.

If nobody's held accountable, nothing is going to improve and you can bet the same disastrous mistakes are going to be made again. In Los Angeles, there's a striking failure to hold anyone accountable, with no amount of incompetence a firing offense, at least not comparable to someone sending a racist email.

That's why blue cities under one party rule are so badly run. We can see it everywhere, in every blue city. When competence is not a problem, problems are going to multiply for the locals.

There should be mass bootings for these fires and every one of them (except a fire official who criticized the mayor) is still on the job.

Image: Screen shot from NewsNation video, via X