“All the warnings were there. It was almost a carbon copy — the same warnings that were ignored before Paradise, ignored again before the Palisades. And nobody was held accountable.” — Jonathan Vigliotti
On January 7, 2025, the Palisades Fire ignited in Los Angeles. Over the first few hours of the fire, the second-largest city in America had no firefighters on the front lines and no coordinated evacuation. Residents fought the flames with garden hoses.
“Where are the firefighters?” somebody, running from the fire, screamed into a live television shot.
Where, indeed, were Los Angeles firefighters? Jonathan Vigliotti — CBS national correspondent, Emmy and Edward R. Murrow Award winner — was there from the beginning. His new book, Torched: How a City Was Left to Burn and the Olympic Rush to Rebuild Los Angeles, is the searing firsthand account of the tragic failure of the Los Angeles authorities to respond to the fire.
The story Vigliotti tells is not new. In some ways, it is a carbon copy of the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise in Northern California. First as tragedy then as farce: inadequate evacuation routes, uncleared fuel loads, officials who failed to act were repeated almost exactly in Pacific Palisades and Altadena. More than eighty people died in Paradise and more than thirty in the LA fires. The economic damage in LA will likely make it the costliest natural disaster in US history. And when the LA mayor and the Californian governor appeared in the first press conference after the fires broke out, Vigliotti reports, all Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom were talking about was the 2028 Olympics.
The political reckoning has not happened, Vigliotti warns. Bass is still mayor and Newsom is a Presidential frontrunner for 2028. California’s current governor’s race is dominated by homelessness and crime. Wildfire — the existential threat to the state, the one where more than $2 billion in taxpayer money was pumped into agencies over several years with more than half a billion unaccounted for — is barely mentioned.
The fires will be back, Vigliotti warns. Maybe this year for the World Cup, maybe in 2028 for the Olympics. So where are the firefighters?
Five Takeaways
• Where Are the Firefighters? The Central Question: Vigliotti was on scene from the first moments of the Palisades Fire. What struck him was not the scale of the flames — he’d seen wildfires before — but the absence of any official response. No firefighters at ground zero. No coordinated evacuation. The traffic gridlock that formed within an hour of ignition blocked fire trucks from getting through. Residents fought embers with garden hoses. A man running from the hillside screamed into Vigliotti’s live shot: “Where are the firefighters?” That question became the question of the disaster — and the book.
• A Carbon Copy of Paradise: The 2018 Camp Fire destroyed the Northern California town of Paradise. More than eighty people died. Before it happened: weeks and months of warnings about inadequate evacuation routes, uncleared fuel loads, and officials who failed to act. The same warnings, in almost identical form, were issued for Pacific Palisades and Altadena before January 7, 2025. They were ignored in the same way. The LA fires killed more than thirty people and will likely be the costliest natural disaster in US history. Nobody has been held accountable. Nobody has been fired.
• The Olympics Come First: Vigliotti’s most damning reporting: in the first press conference after the Palisades Fire broke out, Mayor Karen Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom were already talking about the 2028 Olympic Games and Los Angeles’s ability to rebuild in time. The fires were still burning. The framing was already: how do we make this a story of resilience and recovery? Vigliotti’s counter: the story is not resilience. It is accountability. The question is not whether Los Angeles can rebuild. It is whether it can avoid the same disaster happening again.
• $2 Billion, Half a Billion Unaccounted For: California’s taxes are already among the highest in the country. More than $2 billion in taxpayer money was pumped into homeless-related agencies over several years. More than half a billion was unaccounted for. And the agencies responsible for wildfire prevention and emergency management are chronically underfunded. Vigliotti’s argument: it is not that Californians need to pay more taxes. It is that the taxes they pay need to go to the right agencies. The budget for fighting climate change and protecting communities from fire is dwarfed by the budget for crime. Fire kills more people.
• The Political Reckoning That Hasn’t Happened: California’s governor’s race, in the wake of the deadliest and costliest fire season in recent memory, is dominated by homelessness and crime. Wildfire — the existential threat to the state — is barely mentioned. Nobody in the political class, Vigliotti reports, has come to him asking for advice or analysis. He is not holding his breath. His warning: this summer, and every summer, the fire will come back. The conditions that created the Palisades disaster have not been remedied. Los Angeles is not ready.
About the Guest
Jonathan Vigliotti is a CBS News national correspondent and Emmy and Edward R. Murrow Award winner. He is the author of Torched: How a City Was Left to Burn and the Olympic Rush to Rebuild Los Angeles (Atria/One Signal, May 12, 2026) and Before It's Gone: Stories from the Front Lines of Climate Change in Small-Town America. He is based in Los Angeles.
References:
• Torched: How a City Was Left to Burn and the Olympic Rush to Rebuild Los Angeles by Jonathan Vigliotti (Atria/One Signal, May 12, 2026).
• Lizzie Johnson, Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire — the companion book on the 2018 Camp Fire, referenced in the interview.
• Watch Duty — the wildfire monitoring app Vigliotti mentions as standard equipment for California residents.
About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen. In Keen On America, Andrew brings his pointed Transatlantic wit to making sense of the United States — hosting daily interviews about the history and future of this now venerable Republic. With nearly 2,900 episodes since the show launched on TechCrunch in 2010, Keen On America is the most prolific intellectual interview show in the history of podcasting.
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