Is the Citizen Brigade fighting the fire of the palisades too dangerous?

When a column of smoke rose above the Pacific Palisades on January 7, a few dozen residents in the Santa Monica Mountains, instead of evacuating, jumped into their fire engines. Community Brigade door to door to the house to get out, put out the fires that put out the area and move the animals (including koi fish) to safety.

As the fire gained national attention, Keegan Gibbs, the Brigade’s director of operations, found himself speaking to him Cn, Heaven once New York Times. Local people, divided by the events of January, began to register in the herds. The group of about 50 accepts hundreds of requests to join.

Starting Saturday, the Brigade, which has officially operated under the supervision of the Los Angeles County Fire Press since 2023, will begin training about 50 new hires in the classroom – in fact doubling in Prepperdine in size. They hope to double next year.

Gibbs sees the Brigade’s High-Profisheling FireFefight as a “Trojan Horse” to prove to citizens to help “the real work – domestic wood and wildfire maintenance. However, other fire safety advocates argue that there is no need to engage in dramatic, high-risk operations to make a difference.

“There’s a lot more that the citizens are concerned about,” said David Barrett, chief executive of the Los Angeles Regional Fire Safety Council (one of the many organizations that make a frifled fire runled that works like the Brigade, without the firefighting part).

To the brigade, he said, “It is false that you want to protect your community – how would you feel if your actions caused the death of an arrow?

Guerrilla-style Fire Brigades have a long history in the mountains of Santa Monica, where it does the old school – where the Ezos of Ranchers are still visible, the ethos of the terrible ethos, the Gibbs, of all life, noted. But the 2018 Walsey fire, which longtime friend Tyler Hauptyman fought with garden hoses and shovels, sparked growing frustration among residents that they can’t trust the Fire Department alone to save their homes.

So, after nearly five years of negotiations, the district agreed to formalize the brigade. In the agreement, the Brigade received significant access to fire department training and emergency response authority. At that time, the Fire Department took reasonable control of the previously established activities – the Department now rejects or removes certain people from the Brigade, prove its role during emergencies and ensure that its activities do not interfere with the work of professionals.

Members of the community Brigade have gone through a rigorous vetting process, received rigorous firefighting training on the fire range and have strict limitations on what they can and cannot do in an emergency.

(Community Brigade)

It also requires volunteers to accept the high risk of injury and death by participating in the brigade, and that the fire department is not responsible if anything goes wrong if anything goes wrong if anything goes wrong if something goes wrong if something goes wrong if something goes wrong if something goes wrong if something goes wrong if something goes wrong if something goes wrong if something goes wrong.

Brigade leaders say they take safety seriously: they have a strict screening process for applicants (including a background check), and they have general limitations on what they can and cannot do in an emergency.

“There’s a lot we don’t do because it can be very dangerous, we don’t have the equipment or training for it,” said Gibbs. “We have a guard. This is not a decision that cannot be compared with him. ‘”

On the evening of January 7, as the winds picked up, the power of the palisade fire appeared to be too wet for Gibbs.

One of the Crew’s fire engines — a “type 6,” actually a pickup truck — blew a fuse, leaving it stuck in the park as a nearby home burst into flames. The team sent another member of the Brigade to try to fix it. Flames passed by as flames engulfed the Pacific Coast Roaway, an evacuation route for workers.

By the time the group finds the truck in an orderly fashion and escapes, the darkness of night descends. Gibbs walks away, with fires lighting the way and the crack of the radio finally being renewed. The situation now appeared to be under control as fire crews began responding to another fire near Altadena.

In that moment, Gibbs saw a deep sense of the lives of his fellow members. “It makes you feel soft or distant how something as simple as a fuse can completely destroy your performance,” he said.

It is this difficult reality that worries Barrett the most. Becoming a firefighter usually requires hundreds of hours of training. And after that, the departments train every week, with ongoing medical tests and financial qualifications.

“California’s wildfire conditions are extremely dangerous for residents who are trained in anticipation,” she said.

Community Brigade volunteers to clear brush during the 2024 Palisades Fire.

(Jacob Lee Burgart / Brigade)

When the height of the palisades fire shook Barrett and the members of the Brigade, the haupterman saw a silver lining while walking through his town with fire: Many homes the force had searched and helped the citizens to be tough among the flames.

“One house in particular that looked like it was untouched – but it was Los Flores Canyon, which saw some of the most extreme fire activity I’ve ever seen,” said Haupterman, now Mitigation Director. “That was nice all the confirmation we really need to understand how powerful this is, to get homes prepared in your community, because you can only do it in a real incident.”

To date, the Brigade has completed more than 400 of these inspections, according to Hauptyman. The focus isn’t really on what citizens need to comply with (although those are important, too) but instead on teaching themselves how to burn homes.

“We think we have a big box of games, and we’re starting to shine with them,” Hauptman said. “We light up the whole house, the whole circle, and we see what’s wrong with you.”

For Brigade, the name of the game is public procurement. When high fire safety requirements – such as home durability, safe space and evacuation planning – fail, it can be due to the lack of ballash in public, it builds a little trust with neighbors to help them start thinking about fire in a different way.

It could be a member of the Brigade convincing their neighbor to get out, not a mobile phone alert. It would be a member of the Brigade teaching the resident how to harden their home and clear their brush, not a list of rules from the government. And it can be a member of the Brigade that convinces a homeowner to pack their belongings during a red flag warning, not a tweet from local authorities.

“It’s found differently when you’re just hanging out with your friends or in your community talking neighbor to neighbor,” Gibbs said. “They’re starting to absorb some of this in a way that they can’t when it’s being told to them from the top down.”