The Brief

More than a month before the Palisades Fire, then-Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley issued a dire warning: Her department was woefully understaffed, response times were high, equipment was in disrepair and emergency preparedness was suffering.

It's not clear whether a better funded agency would have slowed the firestorm. Firefighters faced gale force winds of up to 100 mph when the fire broke out.

What is clear is that day-to-day service calls — most of them for medical help — suffer because L.A. has one of the smallest big city fire departments in the country.

“In many ways, the current staffing, deployment model and size of the LAFD has not changed since the 1960s,” Crowley wrote in a November memo to the Board of Fire Commissioners.

The population of the city has grown to more than 3.9 million, from 2.5 million in 1960, but the number of firefighters has not grown proportionately.

Crowley has since been fired by Mayor Karen Bass, who last Friday cited the chief’s failure to increase the number of on-duty firefighters in the hours before the Palisades Fire and her unwillingness to participate in an evaluation of the department’s response to the disaster.

In a statement after her firing, Crowley did not address the Palisades Fire or the mayor’s accusations directly but said she based her actions “on taking care of our firefighters so that they could take care of our communities.”

But Crowley has not been the only one ringing the alarm that the LAFD is stretched to the limit.

Reports obtained by LAist through public records requests found rescue ambulances and fire trucks from the department’s 106 stations have scrambled from one call to the next with ever-increasing response times in recent years.

“It's not about one budget. It's not about one mayor. It's about decades of neglect of the LAFD,” said Freddy Escobar, president of United Firefighters of Los Angeles. “The 911 caller is going to pay the ultimate sacrifice because we don’t have the resources.”

Kristin Crowley was removed from her position as LAFD chief last week, but she plans to remain with the department.

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Myung J. Chun

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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Longer response times

L.A. has just under one firefighter per 1,000 residents. Since 1986, the average number of firefighters in densely populated cities across the country ranged from 1.54 to 1.81 per 1,000, according to the National Fire Protection Association.

As calls for service have increased, so have response times. The overall response time for 90% of calls jumped more than a minute, to 7 minutes and 53 seconds, from 2018 to 2022, according to a 2024 Standards of Cover analysis by the International Association of Firefighters. The IAFF is a labor union of firefighters that also provides analysis of fire operations to local fire departments.

The National Fire Protection Association recommends a 4-minute standard.

Response times are especially complicated in L.A., according to a separate 2023 Standards of Cover report by Citygate Associates. Citygate is a consulting firm that evaluates fire departments across the country.

The challenges include a “hilly topography in some areas, and a public road pattern that, in certain areas, is geographically challenged with rivers, open spaces, and/or a lack of major cross-connecting roadways,” according to the report.

As areas continue to redevelop and add population, the department will need adjustments “just to maintain, much less improve, response times,” the report reads.

Medical calls dominate resources

L.A’s Fire Department responds to more than 500,000 calls for service per year. More than 80% are calls from people who need medical help. The department takes more than 600 people to hospitals every day. It treats hundreds more people on scene, and many of them are unhoused.

The LAFD responds to more than 66,000 calls per year related to the city’s unhoused population, according to the department.

“If we were a hospital, we would have the largest emergency room in the country,” Battalion Chief Eric Roberts said in an interview.

According to the Citygate report, fire trucks are too often busy with medical calls, stretching call times for fires and other calls. The consulting firm recommends expanding the use of lightweight pickup trucks to respond to less serious medical calls and small fires. They’re called fast response vehicles, and the LAFD has three of them.

“The alternative response program needs to scale massively and quickly to lower the workload placed on fire units back down to moderate and serious emergencies,” the Citygate report states. “Well over 100 new non-firefighter personnel must be hired and trained for alternative response measures to meet the service needs of the city.”

The report also recommends staffing 12 to 15 new rescue ambulances and building one new fire station — in the northern San Fernando Valley.

The International Association of Firefighters study recommends adding 32 rescue ambulances and 378 firefighters. In addition, the study recommended adding 62 new fire stations.

Neither study placed a cost on their recommendations.

Personnel by the numbers

Over the past five years, the number of sworn and civilian personnel at the department has stayed relatively constant, rising only slightly to 3,877, from 3,831, according to budget documents. But in the latest budget for the fiscal year that started July 1, 2024, the department lost 58 positions from the year before.

In a December report, Crowley recommended adding 438 positions.

“I think it's important for us to look at what resources do we want to grow,” said Councilmember Tim McOsker, who sits on the city’s Public Safety Committee. “If we have new stations, if we have new apparatus, we need to have persons assigned to them.”

Part of the department’s short staffing problem dates to the 2008 recession, when city tax revenue plummeted. The department lost more than 10% of its positions and mothballed fire trucks.

“We reduced our resources in a way that we have not fully recovered from,” Roberts said.

McOsker agreed.

“Over a number of years — many, many years — we have not put enough money into the Fire Department,” McOsker said, adding that the Palisades Fire has increased urgency. The councilmember, whose District 15 includes San Pedro, Wilmington and Watts, said he thinks “everyone in the city recognizes that it's important to have adequate fire services.”

Calls for increased funding for the Fire Department come as the city faces budget problems. Four months into the fiscal year that began July 1, the city had already overspent its budget by nearly $300 million, according to the city administrative officer.

“We might have to shrink in other areas,” McOsker said.

Councilmember Traci Park, whose District 11 includes the Pacific Palisades, said the city will have to make some hard decisions.

“We can’t keep investing in and doubling down on programs that aren’t getting us results,” Park said. “And I feel like homelessness is a good example of that.”

The question is whether reducing spending on homelessness would increase the burden on the Fire Department.

More from Crowley

Crowley, who has elected to stay with the department in a lower rank, decried the loss of civilian staff and overtime variable staffing hours, warning the reduction has “severely limited the department’s capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large scale emergencies.”

As the Palisades Fire was burning, Crowley said $17 million in cuts to her department in last year’s budget hampered the department’s response — in part because there are not enough mechanics to fix broken fire trucks.

A spokesperson for Mayor Karen Bass said the signing of a labor contract that boosted salaries for firefighters and the funding of new equipment resulted in a net increase in funding for the department of $110 million. But Crowley said it still wasn’t enough.

“We are screaming to be properly funded,” Crowley, the first woman and first gay person to lead the department, told a T.V. station during the first few days of the fire.

In that December report, she requested 438 new sworn and civilian positions for her department as part of a 7.6% increase in her operating budget.

Park, meanwhile, is seeking to place a bond measure on next year’s ballot that would increase funding for the Fire Department.

The councilmember’s proposal has been referred to the City Council’s Rules Committee.

LAist Senior Reporter Ted Rohrlich contributed to this report.

Big Bear’s famous bald eagle nest has taken a turn — both of Jackie and Shadow’s eggs have been attacked by ravens.

In the nest overlooking Big Bear Lake, a raven could be seen poking a large hole into, and potentially eating, one of the eagle eggs. The intrusion was noticed on a popular YouTube livestream run by the nonprofit Friends of Big Bear Valley.

Jenny Voisard, the organization’s media and website manager, confirmed the crack in Friends of Big Bear Valley’s official Facebook group, which has nearly 400,000 members, after Jackie and Shadow were away from the nest, and eggs, for several hours Friday.

Voisard told LAist one of the eggs may still be partly intact, but both eggs are believed to be breached. Jackie returned to their nest shortly after the raven left to lay on the remaining egg, according to organization records.

“Our hearts are with Jackie and Shadow always and we wrap our arms around them,” Voisard wrote. “Our hearts are also with you eagle fam, we know how you are feeling now."

“Step away from the screen when needed,” she continued in the post. “Try and rest tonight.”

How we got here

Jackie laid the first egg of the season around 4:30 p.m. last Friday and the second egg around 5:10 p.m. Monday as thousands of eager fans watched online.

It was almost exactly a year after the feathered duo welcomed the first egg of the 2025 season.

Bald eagles generally have one clutch per season, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley. A second clutch is possible if the eggs don’t make it through the early incubation process.

For example, Jackie laid a second clutch in February 2021 after the first round of eggs was broken or destroyed by ravens the month before.

Jackie and Shadow may have the left the nest unattended Friday because they knew on some level "that not everything was right," Voisard wrote.

"We are hopeful however, because bald eagles can lay replacement clutches if something happens early enough in the season," she continued. "The fact that the raven came to do its job so quickly may be just what Jackie and Shadow needed."

A raven is believed to have breached both eggs in Big Bear's famous nest.

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Friends of Big Bear Valley

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YouTube

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Watch the nest

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The Meta researcher’s tone was alarmed.

“oh my gosh yall IG is a drug,” the user experience specialist allegedly wrote to a colleague, referring to the social media platform Instagram. “We’re basically pushers... We are causing Reward Deficit Disorder bc people are binging on IG so much they can’t feel reward anymore.”

The researcher concluded that users’ addiction was “biological and psychological” and that company management was keen to exploit the dynamic. “The top down directives drive it all towards making sure people keep coming back for more,” the researcher added.

The conversation was included recently as part of a long-simmering lawsuit in a California-based federal court. Condensing complaints from hundreds of school districts and state attorneys general, including California’s, the suit alleges that social media companies knew about risks to children and teens but pushed ahead with marketing their products to them, putting profits above kids’ mental health. The suit seeks monetary damages and changes to companies’ business practices.

The suit, and a similar one filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, targets Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Snap. The cases are exposing embarrassing internal conversations and findings at the companies, particularly Facebook and Instagram owner Meta, further tarnishing their brands in the public eye. They are also testing a particular vector of attack against the platforms, one that targets not so much alarming content as design and marketing decisions that accelerated harms. The upshot, some believe, could be new forms of regulation, including at the federal level.

One document discussed during a hearing this week included a 2016 email from Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook’s live videos feature. In the email, the Meta chief wrote, “we’ll need to be very good about not notifying parents / teachers” about teens’ videos.

“If we tell teens’ parents about their live videos, that will probably ruin the product from the start,” he wrote, according to the email.

In slides summarizing internal tech company documents, released this week as part of the litigation, an internal YouTube discussion suggested that accounts from minors in violation of YouTube policies were actively on the platform for years, producing content an average of “938 days before detection – giving them plenty of time to create content and continue putting themselves and the platform at risk.”

A spokesperson for Meta didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

A YouTube spokesperson, José Castañeda, described the slide released this week as “a cherry-picked view of a much larger safety framework” and said the company uses more than one tool to detect underage accounts, while taking action every time it finds an underage account.

In court, the companies have argued that they are making editorial decisions permitted by the First Amendment,. That trial is set for June.

The state court litigation moved into jury selection this week, increasing the pressure on social media companies.

While the state and federal cases differ slightly, the core argument is the same: that social media companies deliberately designed their products to hook young people, leading to disastrous but foreseeable consequences.

“It's led to mental health issues, serious anxiety, depression, for many. For some, eating disorders, suicidality,” said Previn Warren, co-lead counsel on the case in federal court. “For the schools, it’s been lost control over the educational environment, inability of teachers to really control their classrooms and teach.”

A federal suit

Meta and other companies have faced backlash for years over their treatment of kids on their platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. Parents, lawmakers and privacy advocates have argued that social media contributed to a mental health crisis among young people and that tech companies failed to act when that fact became clear.

Those allegations gained new scrutiny last month when a brief citing still-sealed documents in the federal suit became public.

While the suit also names TikTok, Snap, and Google as defendants, the filing includes allegations against Meta that are especially detailed.

In the more than 200-page filing, for example, the plaintiffs argue that Meta deliberately misled the public about how damaging their platforms were.

Warren pointed to claims in the brief that Meta researchers found that 55% of Facebook users had “mild” problematic use of the platform, while 3.1 percent had “severe” problems. Zuckerberg, according to the brief, pointed out that 3% of billions would still be millions of people.

But the brief claims the company published research noting only that "we estimate (as an upper bound) that 3.1% of Facebook users in the US experience problematic use.”

“That’s a lie,” Warren said.

In response to recent interest in the suits, Meta published a blog post this month arguing that the litigation “oversimplifies” the issue of youth mental health, and pointed to past instances where it has worked with parents and families with features to protect kids.

The federal case faced a key hearing this week, as the defendants argued that a judge should summarily dismiss the case. A decision on that motion is likely coming in the next few weeks, Warren said.

Social media companies, like other web-based services, receive protection from some legal claims under a part of federal law. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act gives legal immunity to website operators for potentially illegal content on their platforms.

Mary Anne Franks, a legal scholar in First Amendment issues at George Washington University who has long studied Section 230, said rather than online content in and of itself, the recent social media cases are focusing on the design of the platforms and their marketing.

“The litigation strategy is saying it's the way that you're providing that space and you're pushing this toward individuals that are vulnerable that is really an issue here,” she said. “It's your own conduct, not somebody else's.”

The companies are making key decisions behind the scenes, she said, and could be held responsible for them.

“You were manipulating things,” she said the plaintiffs are arguing. “You were deliberately making choices about what comes to the top or what is directly accessible or may be tempting to vulnerable users.”

A California state trial begins

Meanwhile, the related state lawsuit went to jury selection this week.

The case, which makes similar claims about personal injury caused by the social media companies, has also drawn nationwide attention, and major industry figures like Zuckerberg are expected to appear on the stand.

The personal injury case focuses on an unnamed plaintiff who claims to have had her mental health damaged by an addiction to social media.

In a last-minute development this week, TikTok and Snap reportedly reached undisclosed settlements in the case. Meta and Google are continuing as defendants.

Franks said these trials could be a tipping point in regulating how tech companies design and market their products. While the companies have faced scrutiny in the past, she said, the glare of examination at trial could be especially bright.

“There's always been talk of it and the members of Congress have kind of said, ‘maybe we'll regulate you,’” she said. “I think now the platforms are really getting nervous about what this is going to mean if they look really bad on the stand.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

On Saturday, Burbank is officially launching a new hiking trail accessibility program for people with disabilities. Two new all-terrain wheelchairs will be available to rent at Stough Canyon Nature Center for use on the fire trail.

The program is the first of its kind in Southern California. Several jurisdictions in the region have beach accessibility programs, but this is the first for mountain trails.

The background

In recent years, Burbank has become a leader in the movement to make sports and the outdoors more accessible to people with disabilities.

Since 2021, the city has launched several adaptive sports programs, including offering wheelchair rugby and fencing, Piper’s Pals youth baseball and basketball, powerchair soccer, boccia and the Burbank Adaptive Sports Expo, which is coming up for its third year running on Feb. 21.

The new equipment

The new all-terrain wheelchairs are the latest in that effort, said Diego Cevallos,  assistant director of the city’s parks and recreation department.

“We are building an ecosystem here in Burbank of robust programming and activities that cater to folks with disabilities,” he said. “Really what we want to do is inspire the community and also our other civic leaders to engage in this movement of making outdoor equity more accessible through programs just like this.”

Burbank is launching its accessibility program with two new all-terrain wheelchairs.

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Courtesy Burbank Parks and Recreation

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The city purchased the all-terrain Action Trackchair AXIS 40 wheelchairs — each about $20,000 — exclusively with funds raised by Leadership Burbank. The community-based organization raised about $90,000 for the trail accessibility program. The remaining funds went to the city’s parafencing program and all staff time associated with maintaining these programs comes out of the city’s general fund, Cevallos said.

How the program works

The program is open to anyone with mobility issues in the region, not only Burbank residents.

You can reserve one of the two wheelchairs by going to BurbankParks.com. The process is a bit clunky, but city staff are working to simplify it.

Once reserved, the user will have to bring a non-disabled companion to assist them and a staff member or volunteer with the Nature Center will accompany them on the trail. That docent will provide nature education during the hike and make sure everything is going smoothly and safely.

Right now, the chairs can only be reserved for up to two hours, said recreation services manager Noah Altman, but he said staff welcomes feedback from the public and will consider updating the requirements for the program as needed.

And an important note: Residents with all types of disabilities can use the chairs — it’s not necessary to have mobility in one’s hands. The family member or friend accompanying the user can remotely control the wheelchairs if needed.

Why all-terrain wheelchairs matter

Mobility challenges are the most common type of disability in L.A. County — around half a million Angelenos have some type of ambulatory disability, according to the county’s Aging and Disabilities Department.

But all-terrain wheelchairs cost around $20,000 and weigh around 400 pounds, making them out of reach and impractical for most individuals to own themselves, said Austin Nicassio, a San Dimas resident and founder of Accessible Off-Road, a nonprofit that advocates and is raising funds for more off-road mobility devices.

Nicassio provided consultation early on in the Burbank accessible trail project effort, and is currently working with L.A. County and California State Parks to bring all-terrain wheelchairs to more areas. The nonprofit is raising money to purchase all-terrain wheelchairs for use in those jurisdictions.

“ It's a huge milestone,” Nicassio said of the Burbank program. “It's going to be absolutely life changing for everyone in Southern California.”

For Nicassio, these efforts are deeply personal. Growing up in the eastern San Gabriel Valley, he used to be an avid hiker and mountain biker.

“Five years ago I was completely able-bodied working as an aerospace engineer, mountain biking, hiking, surfing,” Nicassio said. “My body did whatever I wanted it to do, and I always took it for granted.”

Austin Nicassio uses his all-terrain wheelchair at Frank G. Bonelli Regional Park near his home in San Dimas.

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Courtesy Austin Nicassio

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But in 2022, after a mild case of COVID-19, he started experiencing strange symptoms — muscle weakness, severe brain fog. He was later diagnosed with a condition that affects his blood flow and makes it difficult to stand for long periods of time and impossible to do anything too strenuous. He was also diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome.

“I went from being very active to being a wheelchair user,” Nicassio said.

His mental health plummeted — he realized he used to cope with strong emotions by getting out on the trails or in the ocean. When he finally saved up enough to purchase his own off-road wheelchair, it was “life changing.”

“And not just for me, but for my father, for my wife, for my friends, my whole community,” Nicassio said.

He says he wants to see a world where access to such offroad wheelchairs is the norm.

“ No one has told me that their favorite hike or trail's been paved unless you're disabled, and it has to be,” said Nicassio. “Being out on these trails, a couple miles from the noise, from the trash, from the people, it's life changing.”