What good is saving a celebrity’s house if the entire neighborhood is at risk of burning down?

LA Times reports today that "LAFD could have had at least 10 engines patrolling Palisades hills" according to a former department chief. And since everyone is in the business of pointing fingers, perhaps we should take a closer look at CD11 Councilmember Traci Park. 

When the Palisades Fire ignited on the morning of January 7, it was a disaster waiting to happen. Eight months of drought had turned the hillsides into a tinderbox. The National Weather Service issued dire warnings about the strongest Santa Ana winds in recent years. Fire officials had all the information they needed to anticipate a major fire event in the region. Yet when the flames erupted, there was no firefighting force on the ground to stop them.  

Why? Because city officials, including Los Angeles Councilmember Traci Park, failed to act. Park, who represents Council District 11, has cultivated a close relationship with the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD)—one of her largest campaign donors. But when it came time to ensure that fire crews were deployed in her district ahead of an inevitable catastrophe, she was nowhere to be found.   

The first 911 call came in at 10:29 a.m., reporting flames flickering over a ridge near Piedra Morada Drive. It took 18 minutes for the first fire engine to arrive. By then, the blaze was already spreading out of control.  

Former fire chiefs have stated that the LAFD had ample resources to deploy additional engines to the Palisades before the fire started. That’s what was done in previous years when extreme fire conditions were predicted. Engines patrolling the hillsides could have detected the fire early and hit it hard before it had a chance to grow. But this time, the decision was made to send pre-deployed crews elsewhere—leaving one of L.A.'s most fire-prone neighborhoods dangerously unprotected.  

Where was Traci Park? Why wasn’t she demanding that LAFD pre-deploy engines to her district, as they had in past fire seasons? As a councilmember who enjoys close ties with the LAFD—one of her biggest campaign donors—why didn’t she use her influence to ensure that firefighters were on the ground before disaster struck?

While real fire threats loomed over her district, Traci Park was busy playing dress-up. She dedicated more time and energy to stopping the demolition of Marilyn Monroe’s former home in the Palisades than she did to fighting for fire safety measures. She posed in a black dress, pearls and a fancy hairdo for a press release celebrating the home's preservation—ignoring the reality that the Palisades is not just a playground for nostalgia but one of the most fire-prone areas in the state.

What good is saving a celebrity’s house if the entire neighborhood is at risk of burning down?

Park should have been fighting for resources to protect her district. Instead, she allowed her own donors at LAFD’s leadership level to leave the Palisades exposed. If she truly had the community’s best interests at heart, she would have demanded answers when fire engines weren’t staged in advance. She would have held LAFD accountable for prioritizing other areas over her district. She would have ensured that residents weren’t left to fend for themselves when the inevitable disaster struck.  

Instead, she remained silent.  

The Palisades is a beautiful community, but it is also an extremely dangerous one. Decades of unchecked development have placed thousands of homes directly in the path of inevitable fires and floods. Scientists and fire experts have warned time and again that the Palisades, like other wildland-urban interface areas, is not sustainable in its current form.

A responsible leader would have been honest with residents about the risks. A responsible leader would have pushed for stronger fire safety measures, better evacuation plans, and stricter regulations on development in high-risk zones.

Instead, Traci Park chose the easy path: pretending everything was fine. Now, after 7,000 structures have been lost and at least 12 people have died, we’re left asking: why didn’t Traci Park act?