In an interview with KNX News’ Karen Adams, Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Jaime Moore says he’s working on regaining the trust of the public after admitting last week that the after-action report of the Palisades fire was watered down.
“I want to rebuild the trust of my own organization, and I want to move forward and really make great strides in the city of Los Angeles and what we can provide to them,” he said.
He said he admitted that the report was watered down because it was wrong to omit so many details.
“Terms like failure was changed to challenged, so those words, although they may not seem like a lot on paper, it's a big difference to the community,” he said. “I acknowledge the changes. I do not condone those changes, and I promise the people of Los Angeles that'll never happen again.”
When asked who ordered the revisions, Moore said the decision was made by the interim fire chief Ronnie Villanueva
“Now I can't say whether or not he made any recommendations to edit it or alter it or change it, but that all happened before I was the fire chief,” he said.
He also broke down what changes are being made in the department.
“We've implemented a drone policy that's anything over an acre we should because we now have 11 drones and 12 drone operators that we can actually go cover the fire,” he said.
“We can videotape the fire. We can look for hotspots. We could use thermal imaging cameras because since then we have thermal imaging technology for all members. We can walk it, use thermal imaging cameras, and then we could pre-deploy our resources better.”
Moore noted that the department still lacks the resources, staff, apparatus, and money. The firefighters' union has a ballot measure calling for a 0.5-cent sales tax to help with that.
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