engines

With the power units being made simpler next year, will they generate more noise than presently (I accept they will never sound like they did up until 2013)? I consider it an embarrassment for the sport that the F3 cars (and Porsche Cup cars) that also race on the F1 weekends are louder than the main event – Raffi

The impression might be that the new engines being introduced next year should be louder because they will no longer have an MGU-H – the device that recovers energy from the turbo.

But I am told that while they might be a little louder than currently, they won’t be that different, because they still have turbos, which is the overriding impact on the sound.

As you may have read, there is a push from governing body the FIA at the moment to return F1 to older-style naturally aspirated engines, and that’s partly because of the noise.

Initially, this seems to have come from a whim of FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, with influence from Bernie Ecclestone and Christian Horner, rather than a reasoned opinion based on thorough research of the desires of the audience.

However, it does chime with concerns that exist about how F1 will look next year because of the energy-recovery demands of the new engines, which have close to 50% of their total power output coming from the electrical part of the engine.

From what I’m told about fan surveys done by F1, there is no widespread agreement on whether louder engines would be a positive.

Some – like Raffi – obviously think they would be.

But the F1 fanbase has changed a lot in recent years, and inside the sport there is concern that newer members of the audience – more women and children now come to races, for example – would not welcome engines that made so much noise as to be virtually deafening, that made ear defenders an absolute necessity, that stopped people having a comfortable conversation when the race was on, etc. Likewise the guests in the corporate boxes.

Equally, city races such as Miami and Las Vegas would be threatened if the cars suddenly became much noisier than was promised to residents when discussions about the races took place.

It would highly likely revive the complaints that used to take place in Melbourne about this, too.

The world has moved on in many different ways since the first decade of this century, and it’s far from clear that effectively turning the clock back 20 or 30 years would be a good idea, even if it was with the addition of a token hybrid element to the engines and sustainable fuel.

Talks are ongoing on the future direction of engines from 2030 or so onwards, but they are a long way from reaching a conclusion.

There is a sense that V8s might return – many manufacturers in F1 still make V8s for road cars. But most say a hybrid element is non-negotiable, and some – such as Audi – are currently insisting on a turbo, too. A conclusion is a long way away.

Aug. 2 (UPI) — OpenAI is ending the option to have Google and other search engines index user chats with ChatGPT and make the content of those chats discoverable on searches.

Google accounts for more than 89% of all online searches, which made private chats on ChatGPT potentially widely accessible when indexed on that search engine and others.

“This feature introduced too many opportunities for folks to accidentally share things they didn’t intend to, so we’re removing the option,” Dan Stuckey, OpenAI chief information security officer, told PC Mag.

Bing, DuckDuckGo and other search engines will continue to index discoverable chats, but only for a while longer.

“We’re also working to remove indexed content from the relevant search engines,” Stuckey said.

OpenAI recently enabled the index option for private ChatGPT discussions as an experiment, Stuckey added, but that experiment is ending.

A message informed users their indexed chats were searchable on Google and other search engines, but many users did not read the message or don’t understand the extent to which their conversations might be available to others.

Such conversations are accessible when affixing “site:chatgpt/share” to search queries when those conversations are indexed.

News of the indexed private conversations with ChatGPT first was reported by FastCompany on Wednesday in a story detailing Google’s indexing of ChatGPT conversations.

The indexing does not provide information on respective users, but the conversations might include personal information when mentioned by the users while conversing with ChatGPT.

Many users also were unaware that sharing a conversation with someone via social apps, such as WhatsApp, when saving the URL for future use would cause Google to make it potentially widely available to millions of people.

OpenAI officials recently announced they were appealing a court order requiring the preservation of all chats that users delete after conversing with ChatGPT, Ars Technica reported.

July 11 (UPI) — The fuel switches to both engines on the Air India Flight 171 moved to the “cutoff” position immediately before the crash that killed 260 after taking off on June 12.

The two switches that control the fuel supply to the two jet engines on the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner were switched to the off position as the aircraft took off, a preliminary report released by investigators on Friday, The Seattle Times reported.

The engines shut off within a second of one another, which caused the aircraft to crash just a mile away from the Ahmedabad, India, airport, India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau said in the preliminary report.

The crash killed 241 passengers and crew, plus 19 others on the ground, but one person survived the disastrous crash.

“Air India stands in solidarity with the families and those affected by the AI 171 accident,” the company said in a statement. “We continue to mourn the loss and are fully committed to providing support during this difficult time.”

Airline officials are working with investigators and other authorities to determine the exact cause of the crash, according to the unattributed statement.

The investigation into its cause has focused on the two fuel-control switches that are located in the aircraft’s cockpit, which investigators said were changed from the “run” position to “cutoff,” according to CNN.

“In the cockpit voice recording, one of the pilots is heard asking the other, ‘Why did he cut off'” the fuel supply to the engines, the report says. “The other pilot responded that he did not do so.”

The aircraft had attained a speed of 180 knots, or about 207 mph, when first one and then the other switches were changed to the cutoff position about a second apart, which caused the aircraft to lose its lift and crash, investigators said.

The switches were returned to the “run” position, but it was too late, and one of the pilots called out, “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,” the report says.

The flight was bound for London’s Gatwick Airport but was airborne for only 32 seconds and crashed just a mile from the airport.

The flight’s captain was a 56-year-old male with more than 15,000 hours of flight experience, and the flight’s first officer was a 32-year-old male with more than 3,400 hours of flight experience.

The captain and first officer tested negative for intoxicating substances before the flight, the aircraft was in good condition and its weight was within acceptable limits, according to the preliminary report.

The flight took off at 1:30 p.m. local time and was scheduled to land in London about five hours later.

Crash victims include 169 from India, 53 from the United Kingdom, seven from Portugal and one from Canada.

The lone survivor is from the United Kingdom and escaped through an opening in the fuselage.

The aircraft was built at Boeing’s Everett, Wash., facility, recorded its first flight in 2013 and was delivered to Air India in 2014.

The 787 Dreamliner is Boeing’s smallest wide-body commercial aircraft and holds up to 242 passengers and crew.

The preliminary report was released 30 days after the crash in accordance with the International Civil Aviation Organization’s guidelines, which requires receipt of such reports within 30 days of a fatal crash.

Investigators from the United States and the United Kingdom are assisting the investigation.

After the Palisades fire ignited, top brass at the Los Angeles Fire Department were quick to say that they were hampered by broken fire engines and a lack of mechanics to fix them.

If the roughly 40 fire engines that were in the shop had been repaired, they said, the battle against what turned out to be one of the costliest and most destructive disasters in Los Angeles history might have unfolded differently.

Then-Fire Chief Kristin Crowley cited the disabled engines as a reason fire officials didn’t dispatch more personnel to fire-prone areas as the winds escalated, and why they sent home firefighters who showed up to help as the blaze raged out of control. The department, she said, should have had three times as many mechanics.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, right, and Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley address the media at a press conference onJan. 11.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

But many of the broken engines highlighted by LAFD officials had been out of service for many months or even years — and not necessarily for a lack of mechanics, according to a Times review of engine work orders as of Jan. 3, four days before the fire.

What’s more, the LAFD had dozens of other engines that could have been staffed and deployed in advance of the fire.

Instead, the service records point to a broader problem: the city’s longtime reliance on an aging fleet of engines.

Well over half of the LAFD’s fire engines are due to be replaced. According to an LAFD report presented to the city Fire Commission last month, 127 out of 210 fire engines — 60% — and 29 out of 60 ladder trucks — 48% — are operating beyond their recommended lifespans.

“It just hasn’t been a priority,” said Frank Líma, general secretary treasurer of the International Assn. of Fire Fighters who is also an LAFD captain, adding that frontline rigs are “getting pounded like never before” as the number of 911 calls increases.

That means officials are relying heavily on reserve engines — older vehicles that can be used in emergencies or when regular engines are in the shop. The goal is to use no more than half of those vehicles, but for the last three years, LAFD has used, on average, 80% of the trucks, engines and ambulances in reserve, according to the Fire Commission report.

“That’s indicative of a fleet that’s just getting older,” said Assistant Chief Peter Hsiao, who oversees LAFD’s supply and maintenance division, in an interview with The Times.

“As our fleet gets older, the repairs become more difficult,” Hsiao told the Fire Commission. “We’re now doing things like rebuilding suspensions, rebuilding pump transmissions, rebuilding transmissions, engine overhauls.”

The problem stems from long-term funding challenges, Hsiao said in the interview, with the department receiving varying amounts of money each year that have to be divvied up among competing equipment needs.

“If you extrapolate that over a longer period of time, then you end up in a situation where we are,” he said.

To make matters worse, Hsiao said, the price of new engines and trucks has doubled since the pandemic. Engines that cost $775,000 a few years ago are now pushing $1.5 million — and it takes three years or more to build them, he said.

The number of fire engine manufacturers has also declined.

Recently, the IAFF asked the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate a consolidation in emergency vehicle manufacturers that it said has resulted in skyrocketing costs and “brutal” wait times. In a letter, the IAFF said that at least two dozen companies have been rolled up into just three main manufacturers.

Firefighters battle the Palisades fire on El Medio Avenue on Jan. 7 in Pacific Palisades.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

“These problems have reduced the readiness of fire departments to respond to emergencies, with dire consequences for public safety,” the letter said.

The IAFF is the parent organization of the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City, the local union representing LAFD firefighters. IAFF has been running the local labor group since suspending its top officers last month over allegations of financial impropriety.

Hsiao said the LAFD’s fleet is well-maintained, and engines don’t often break down.

But the age and condition of the fleet could deteriorate further, even with an infusion of cash to buy new equipment, because the wait times are so long.

Mayor Karen Bass’ office has previously said that she secured $51 million last year to purchase 10 fire engines, five trucks, 20 ambulances and other equipment. The 2025-26 budget passed by the City Council last month includes nearly $68 million for 10 fire engines, four trucks, 10 ambulances and a helicopter, among other equipment, the mayor’s office said.

“The Mayor’s Office is working with new leadership at LAFD to ensure that new vehicles are purchased in a timely manner and put into service,” a spokesperson said in an email.

A majority of the Fire Department’s budget goes toward pay and benefits for its more than 3,700 employees, most of them firefighters.

Members of the Los Angeles Fire Department fill the council chambers to show support for former Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, who was at City Hall March 4 to appeal her termination to the Los Angeles City Council after Mayor Karen Bass fired her as head of the Fire Department. Under the city charter, Crowley would need the support of 10 of the 15 council members to be reinstated as chief.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Despite the city’s financial troubles, firefighters secured four years of pay raises last year through negotiations with Bass. And firefighters often make much more than their base pay, with about 30% of the LAFD’s payroll costs going to overtime, according to the city’s payroll database. Firefighters and fire captains each earned an average of $73,500 in overtime last year, on top of an average base salary of about $140,100, the data show.

Líma said that while new engines will be useful, “a one-year little infusion doesn’t help a systemic problem that’s developed over decades.” Asked whether firefighters would defer raises, he said they “shouldn’t fund the Fire Department off the backs of their salaries.”

The National Fire Protection Assn. recommends that fire engines move to reserve status after 15 years and out of the fleet altogether after 25 years.

But many larger cities need to act sooner, “because of the constant wear and tear city equipment takes,” said Marc Bashoor, a former fire chief who now trains firefighters across the country, in an email. “In my opinion, 10 years is OLD for city apparatus.”

Bashoor also noted that incorporating a variety of brands into a fleet, as the LAFD does, can increase repair times.

“When a fire department doesn’t have a standardized fleet, departments typically are unable to stock enough … parts to fit every brand,” he said in an email. “They then have to find the part or use a 3rd party, which can significantly delay repairs.”

Of the roughly 40 engines in the shop before the Palisades fire, three were built in 1999. Hsiao said engines that old are typically used for training and don’t respond to calls.

Those that are too old or damaged from collisions or fires to ever return to city streets sometimes remain in the yard so they can be stripped for parts or used for training. Some are kept as evidence in lawsuits.

According to the service records reviewed by The Times, a work order was opened in 2023 for a 2003 engine burned in a fire, with notes saying “strip for salvage.” A 2006 engine damaged in an accident was waiting for parts, according to notes associated with a work order from last April. Two 2018 engines were damaged in collisions, including one with “heavy damage” to the rear body that had to be towed in, according to notes for an order from last July. Other orders noted oil leaks or problems with head gaskets.

Almost 30 of the engines that were out of service before the fire — 70% on the list — were 15 or more years old, past what the city considers an appropriate lifespan. Only a dozen had work orders that were three months old or less. That included three newer engines — two built in 2019 and one in 2020 — whose service records showed they were waiting for “warranty” repairs.

After the fire, LAFD union officials echoed Crowley’s fleet maintenance concerns. Freddy Escobar, who was then president of the United Firefighters of Los Angeles City, blamed chronic underfunding.

“The LAFD does not have the funding mechanism to supply enough mechanics and enough money for the parts to repair these engines, the trucks, the ambulances,” Escobar told KTLA-TV.

The issues date back more than a decade. A 2019 report showed that LAFD’s equipment was even more outdated at the time, with 136 of 216 engines, or 63%, due for replacement, as well as 43 of 58 ladder trucks, or 74%. In a report from 2012, LAFD officials said they didn’t have enough mechanics to keep up with the workload.

“Of paramount concern is the Department’s aging and less reliable fleet, a growing backlog of deferred repairs, and increased maintenance expense,” the 2012 report said, adding that mechanics were primarily doing emergency repairs instead of preventative maintenance.

LAFD’s equipment and operations have been under heightened scrutiny since the Palisades fire erupted Jan. 7, destroying thousands of homes and killing 12 people, with many saying that officials were severely unprepared.

A total of 18 firefighters are typically on duty at the two fire stations in the Palisades — Stations 23 and 69 — to respond to emergencies. Only 14 of them are routinely available to fight brush fires, The Times previously reported. The other four are assigned to ambulances at the two stations, although they might help with evacuations or rescues during fires.

The Palisades fire burns along Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

LAFD officials did not pre-deploy any engines to the Palisades ahead of the fire, despite warnings about extreme weather, a Times investigation found. In preparing for the winds, the department staffed only five of more than 40 engines available to supplement the regular firefighting force.

Those working engines could have been pre-positioned in the Palisades and elsewhere, as had been done in the past during similar weather.

Less than two months after the fire, Bass dismissed Crowley, citing the chief’s pre-deployment decisions as one of the reasons.

Bass has rejected the idea that there was any connection between reductions at the department and the city’s response to the wildfires.

Meanwhile, the number of mechanics on the job hasn’t changed much in recent years, fluctuating between 64 and 74 since 2020, according to records released by the LAFD in January. As of this year, the agency had 71 mechanics.

According to its report to the Fire Commission, the LAFD doesn’t have enough mechanics to maintain and repair its fleet, based on the average number of hours the department said it takes to maintain a single vehicle.

Last year, the report said, mechanics completed 31,331 of 32,317 work requests, or 97%. So far this year, they have completed 62%, according to the report.

“With a greater number of mechanics, we can reduce the delays. However, a limited facility size, parts availability, and warranty repairs compound the issue,” LAFD said in an unsigned email.

Special correspondent Paul Pringle contributed to this report.

After humans, and arguably before dogs and horses, there is no character more vital to the screen, and more vital onscreen, than the automobile.

Driven or driverless, the car is the most animated of inanimate objects, sometimes literally a cartoon, with a voice, a personality, a name. Even when not speaking, they purr, they roar. They are stars in their own right — the Batmobile, the Munster Koach, James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5, K.I.T.T. (the modified 1982 Pontiac Trans Am from “Knight Rider”), the Ford Grand Torino (nicknamed the Striped Tomato) driven by Starsky and Hutch. They might represent freedom, power, delinquency or even the devil. Whole movies have been built about them and the amazing things they can do, but even when they aren’t jumping and flipping and crashing, they play an essential role in helping flesh-and-blood characters take care of business.

Perhaps in some sort of reaction to our enlightened view of the effects of our gas-guzzling ways, two new series fetishizing the internal combustion engine arrive, Max’s “Duster,” now streaming, and Prime Video’s “Motorheads,” premiering Tuesday.

Created by J.J. Abrams and LaToya Morgan and named for the supernaturally shiny cherry-red Plymouth the hero drives, “Duster” is stupid fun, a comic melodrama steeped in 1970s exploitation flicks, with a lot of loving homage to period clothes, knickknacks and interior design. The driver is Jim Ellis, played by Josh Holloway, in what reads like a turn on Sawyer, his charming, criminal character from Abrams’ “Lost,” topped with a shot of Matthew McConaughey.

Jim, a man who has never bothered to make a three-point turn, works out of Phoenix for Southwest crime boss Ezra Saxton (Keith David, monumental as always), picking up this, delivering that. The first delivery we see turns out to be a human heart, picked up from a fast-food drive-through window, destined for Saxton’s ailing son, Royce (Benjamin Charles Watson). Along for the ride is little Luna (Adriana Aluna Martinez), who calls Jim “uncle,” though you are free to speculate; her mother, Izzy (Camille Guaty), is a big-rig trucker — trucking being another fun feature of ’70s pop culture — who will find cause to become a labor leader.

Keith David, left, as Ezra Saxton and Benjamin Charles Watson as his son, Royce.

(Ursula Coyote / Max)

The Ellises and the Saxtons, also including daughter Genesis (Sydney Elisabeth), have history — Jim’s father, Wade (Corbin Bernson), served with Ezra in World War II, and his late lamented brother had worked for him as well. Saxton is the sort of bad guy with whom you somehow sympathize in spite of the violence he employs; there’s genuine affection among the families, though one is never sure when or where a line will be drawn, only that one probably will be.

Into Jim’s low-rent but relatively settled, even happy world comes FBI agent Nina Hayes (Rachel Hilson, sparky), fresh out of Quantico and ambitious to make a mark. As a Black woman, she’s told, “No one’s clamoring for an agent like you,” but she’s been assigned to Phoenix “because we have no other options.” She’s partnered there with cheerful Navajo agent Awan (Asivak Koostachin), as if to corral the minorities into a manageable corner, and assigned the Saxton case, regarded as “cursed” and so intractable as to be not worth touching.

Which is to say, agents deemed not worth taking seriously — along with underestimated “girl Friday” Jessica (Sofia Vassilieva) — have been thrown a case deemed not worth taking seriously. This is a classic premise for a procedural and strikes some notes about racism and sexism in the bargain, not out of tune with the times in which it’s set, or the times in which we’re watching.

Nina, who has managed to gather evidence of Jim crossing state lines to deliver the heart, which was stolen, and that Saxton may have been responsible for his brother’s death, bullies and tempts him into becoming a confidential informant. Thus begins an uneasy partnership, though their storylines run largely on separate tracks in separate scenes.

“Lost” was not a show that bothered much with sense in order to achieve its effects, and “Duster,” though it involves a far-reaching conspiracy whose payoff plays like the end of a shaggy-dog story, is a show of effects, of set pieces and sequences, of car chases and fistfights, of left-field notions and characters. These include Patrick Warburton as an Elvis-obsessed mobster named Sunglasses; Donal Logue as a corrupt, perverse, evangelical policeman; Gail O’Grady as Jim’s stepmother, a former showgirl who doesn’t much like him; LSD experiments; absurd puzzles (also see: “Lost”); an airheaded version of Adrienne Barbeau (Mikaela Hoover), with the actual Barbeau, a queen of genre films, making an appearance; Richard Nixon (in a few creepy seconds of AI); an oddly jolly Howard Hughes (Tom Nelis) in his Kleenex-box slippers; and a “Roadrunner” pastiche. Though not devoid of genuine feeling, it’s best experienced as a collection of attitudes and energies, noises and colors. Don’t take it any more seriously than it takes itself.

The opening titles are super cool.

Zac (Michael Cimino), left, Caitlyn (Melissa Collazo) and Marcel (Nicolas Cantu) in Prime Video’s “Motoheads.”

(Keri Anderson / Prime Video)

“Motorheads” is a familiar sort of modern teenage soap opera but with cars. For reasons known only to series creator John A. Norris, the whole town is obsessed with them, and along with its human storylines, the series is a tour of automotive entertainments — drag racing, street racing, ATV racing, go-kart racing, classic car collecting. I have no idea whether this will resonate with the target demographic, but there is much I cannot tell you about kids these days.

As is common to the form, our young protagonists — Michael Cimino as Zac and Melissa Collazo as Caitlyn — are new to town, having been brought back from New York City by their mother, Samantha (Nathalie Kelly), to the oxymoronically named Rust Belt hamlet of Ironwood, where she was raised, and which is the last place anyone saw their father, Christian (Deacon Phillippe in flashbacks), 17 years earlier. He’s an infamous local legend, admired for his skill behind the wheel; aerial footage of Christian threading his way through a cordon of police cars as the getaway driver in a robbery keeps making its way into the show, though if you live in Los Angeles, you see this sort of thing on the news all the time. Marquee name Ryan Phillippe plays the kids’ Uncle Logan, who runs a garage that apparently does no business, but he has love and wisdom to spare.

Though at the center of the series, Zac’s storyline is a little shopworn, not just his wish to become, almost out of nowhere, Ironwood’s top speed racer, but his textbook interest in rich girl Alicia (Mia Healey), the girlfriend of rich boy Harris (Josh Macqueen), a Porsche-driving bully who is also hurting inside — so feel free to get a crush on him, if that’s your type. More interesting is sister Caitlyn, who prefers building cars to racing them and is perhaps the series’ most emotionally balanced character.

She becomes friends with shop classmate Curtis (Uriah Shelton), tall and good-looking, whose criminally inclined older brother, Ray (Drake Rodger), will become a sort of dark mentor to Zac. With the addition of Marcel (Nicolas Cantu), the archetypal “geek who becomes the hero’s best friend,” who works at the diner his father (grieving, drunk) used to own and dreams of designing cars, the four constitute the show’s outsider band of good guys.

They’ll have their not-always-happy business with each other — being teenagers, you know, things happen — and with their elders, as their elders will with one another. The past is not past in Ironwood; old feelings will resurface and old plots unravel. (And no one knows what happened to Christian.) Except for the cars sprinkled on top, it’s old stuff, not very deep, but produced with an engaging naturalism that rounds off the narrative extremes, enhances what’s commonplace and makes “Motorheads” easy to watch. (Colin Hoult is the sensitive director of photography, it’s worth mentioning.)

Drive on.

The first 911 call came at 10:29 a.m., from a resident of Piedra Morada Drive in Pacific Palisades. Amid high winds, a fire was visible in the distance, the flames flickering over a chaparral-choked ridge.

About 11 minutes later, the Los Angeles Fire Department’s Engine 23 radioed into dispatch:

“We’re on Palisades Drive. We went past Piedra Morada. We’re still heading up to where the fire is showing.”

A firefighter sprays water on a burning house on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

It would be more than 18 minutes after the 911 call before Engine 23 or any other firefighting crew reached the scene that morning of Jan. 7, according to an LAFD incident log obtained by The Times.

Travel times were especially critical because LAFD officials had decided not to pre-deploy any engines and firefighters to the Palisades — as they had done in the past — despite being warned that some of the most dangerous winds in recent years were headed for the region.

In online alerts, the National Weather Service had highlighted the Palisades, the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood as among the areas of “greatest concern” for the expected windstorm and the extraordinary fire hazard it would bring.

A firefighter tries to put out a portion of the Pacific Palisades fire that threatens a nearby building on Sunset Boulevard on Jan. 7.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

The LAFD could have sent least 10 additional engines to the Palisades before the fire — engines that could have been on patrol along the hillsides and canyons, several former top officials for the department told The Times.

Crews from those engines might have spotted the fire soon after it started, when it was still small enough to give them a chance to control it, the former officials said.

Instead, according to publicly available information, the crews nearest to the fire were based at Stations 23 and 69, both on Sunset Boulevard, about three to four miles from the Piedra Morada address on a street map.

By the time engines from the stations reached the area of the fire, the flames had begun a march that was ultimately unstoppable, eventually destroying nearly 7,000 homes and other structures and killing at least 12.

LAFD Chief Kristin Crowley did not respond to interview requests for this story. More than a month after the fire, she has not answered questions from The Times about the precise whereabouts of engines before the blaze, which engine or engines responded first, and when helicopters began dropping water on the flames, among other queries.

Mayor Karen Bass’ office also has not responded to The Times’ requests that the city release records documenting the LAFD’s actions in the early stages of the fire.

A building on Sunset Boulevard is threatened by the Palisades fire on Jan. 7.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

A total of 18 firefighters are typically on duty at Stations 23 and 69 to respond to emergencies. Only 14 of them are routinely available to fight brush fires, several former LAFD chiefs told The Times. The other four are assigned to ambulances at the two stations, although they might help with evacuations or rescues during fires.

The Palisades fire’s toll might not have been as bad if extra engines had been pre-positioned much closer to the most fire-prone areas than the two Palisades stations, the ex-chiefs said.

They also noted that LAFD officials pre-deployed significantly fewer engines citywide on Jan. 7 than they did in response to wind warnings in previous years, including 2011, 2013 and 2019.

With the dire wind forecasts and a winter with almost no rain, no one knew exactly where a fire was going to break out, just that one was likely to occur and to spread quickly. But the Palisades area met the department’s criteria for significant pre-deployments because its stations face longer response times to the brush, according to the ex-chiefs.

Firetrucks line Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu on Jan. 8 to provide structural protection for beachfront homes.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

They said that if there had been engines available to patrol along the hills, commanders could have directed firefighters to monitor the area where the fire eventually started. Six days earlier, on New Year’s Day, a small blaze had been extinguished there but might have left smoldering embers hidden in the undergrowth, the former chiefs said.

An investigation by the LAFD and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is examining, among other possibilities, whether a wind-propelled “rekindling” from such embers caused the Jan. 7 fire.

Former LAFD Asst. Chief Patrick Butler, now chief of the Redondo Beach Fire Department, said that chaparral can burn underground without visible flames for weeks after the original fire has been knocked down. He said he had to deal with flare-ups of unseen embers for about a week after the 2019 Getty fire, for which he served as an LAFD commander.

Former LAFD Asst. Chief Patrick Butler, who is now chief of the Redondo Beach Fire Department. He oversaw preparations for numerous high-wind events for the LAFD, assigning extra engines to fire-prone areas.

(Los Angeles Fire Department)

Rekindles are “a very common phenomenon,” said Butler, who left the LAFD in 2021 after three decades, during which he oversaw arson investigations and other special operations for three years.

After a large fire, most of the surrounding vegetation has already burned, Butler said. But after a smaller fire like the Jan. 1 one, he said, “a rekindle can easily grow in the right conditions, like high winds.”

Butler and several other former officials said fires are always more challenging to fight in strong winds, but pre-deploying engines could enable crews to flank a blaze to “keep it skinny” — firefighter parlance for preventing it from spreading sideways — while other rigs attack the head of the flames from a safe distance with help, if available, from helicopters.

Other pre-deployed engines could guard homes in the immediate path of the fire, they said.

Instead, Engine 23 and crews from Station 69 were apparently mostly on their own in the initial ground response to the fire, according to dispatch records, radio transmissions and interviews. Engines from LAFD stations in Brentwood and Venice also responded, but that was not enough, the transmissions indicate.

Without strategically placed reinforcements, the handful of engines had virtually no prospects of carrying out the LAFD’s strategy for brush fires — hit it hard and fast, the former fire officials said.

Chula Vista firefighters keep an eye on the Palisades blaze after a phosphorus drop in Mandeville Canyon in Brentwood on Jan. 11.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

The LAFD command’s failure to provide more engines put firefighters “at a strategic disadvantage from the first play,” said Rick Crawford, a former LAFD battalion chief who left the department last year after more than three decades to become emergency and crisis management coordinator for the U.S. Capitol. “The firefighters did an outstanding job given the hand they were dealt. … They just didn’t have time to employ their normal tactics.”

Perry Vermillion, who retired as a captain after 33 years with the Los Angeles County Fire Department, agreed.

“If you don’t hit it hard in the beginning, it’s over,” said Vermillion, who fought numerous blazes in the Malibu area near the Palisades.

The LAFD should have staged engines at several points in the Palisades, Vermillion said, and kept them moving and on the lookout before the windstorm hit.

“You drive around,” he said. “You drive up the hills and learn the area. You’re on patrol. You send a couple of strike teams up here or there and hang out in a park. You move them to all different places so they’re close to the brush.”

Soon after the fire, in defending her department’s decision not to order a large pre-deployment, Crowley blamed budget cuts and a backlog of engines in ill repair. But The Times has reported that the department had more than enough working engines to send dozens of extra rigs to the Palisades and elsewhere.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, left, Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, right, and Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell, rear, address the media at a news conference on Jan. 11.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Crowley and her staff have not responded to The Times’ questions about which engines were inoperable the day of the fire and the types of repairs they needed.

LAFD Deputy Chief Richard Fields, who was in charge of preparations for the life-threatening windstorm, told The Times that the engines pre-deployed early the morning of Jan. 7 — none of which were sent to the Palisades — were sufficient. Officials decided the day before to pre-deploy nine engines to Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. They said they added more the morning of Jan. 7 to cover northeast L.A., but the specific number and time of day was unclear from interviews with the officials.

Jason Hing, chief deputy of emergency operations, acknowledged that the pre-deployed engines were not enough but contended that more would not have made a difference against such a ferocious fire.

The nine pre-deployed engines were eventually dispatched to the Palisades fire by noon, according to the incident log obtained by The Times. By then, the blaze was already taking out homes.

The Palisades fire spreads through Mandeville Canyon toward Encino on Jan. 10.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The department also decided not to order about 1,000 firefighters ending their shifts early on Jan. 7 to remain on duty to staff reserve engines and perform other tasks, The Times reported. By commandeering this extra staffing and pulling other engines from stations around the city, the LAFD could have sent at least 10 more rigs to each of the city’s five wildland corridors, including the Palisades, most at risk for fires, the former chiefs said.

Without that kind of backup or anything like it, Engine 23 and one or both engines from Station 69 had their work cut out for them.

As Engine 23 passed Piedra Morada, crews were asked to assess the threat to homes, once they laid eyes on the fire, the radio traffic indicated. Twenty additional engines, they were told, were on the way.

“Once you get up there, let me know what we’re looking like, if we’ve got any immediate impact to structures and what you need,” a voice said.

A helicopter made it over first and surveyed the situation from above.

A firefighter battles the Palisades blaze as homes burn along Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu on Jan. 8.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s pushing directly towards the Palisades,” someone radioed from the sky. “This has the potential for 200 acres in the next 20 minutes. You probably have an impact time into structures being threatened in under 20 minutes.”

Firefighters on the ground then weighed in. “Thirty acres of medium to heavy brush burning toward the ocean,” one crew member said. “Keep all companies coming.”

Crews reported burning embers flying a half-mile to three-quarters of a mile ahead of the main blaze. Within an hour of the first 911 call, homes had started to burn.

Terry Fahn, who lost his home in the blaze, expected firefighters to be up in the hills ahead of time, given the severe wind forecast and the New Year’s Day brush fire that had burned through the same area.

“Staging equipment up there would’ve been huge,” he said.

Both engines of Boeing 737-800 jet that crashed in December killing 179 contained remains of Baikal teals, a migratory duck that flies to South Korea for winter.

The engines of a plane that crashed in South Korea last month contained bird remains, a preliminary investigation into the country’s worst aviation disaster has found.

The six-page report released on Monday by South Korean authorities said both engines of the Boeing 737-800 jet had DNA from Baikal Teals, a type of migratory duck that flies to South Korea for winter in huge flocks.

Bird bloodstains and feathers were “found on each” engine, it added.

However, the report provided no initial conclusions about what may have caused the Jeju Air plane to land without its landing gear deployed, and why flight data recorders stopped recording in the final four minutes of the flight.

A probe being conducted by South Korean and US investigators continues.

‘Group of birds’

The plane was flying from Thailand to Muan in South Korea on December 29 when it crash-landed and exploded into a fireball after slamming into a concrete barrier.

The disaster killed 179 of the 181 passengers and crew of the plane.

“The pilots identified a group of birds while approaching runway 01, and a security camera filmed HL8088 coming close to a group of birds during a go-around,” the report added, referring to the Jeju Air jet’s registration number.

After the air traffic control tower cleared the aircraft to land, it advised the pilots to exercise caution against potential bird strikes at 8:58am, the report said.

Just a minute later, both the voice and data recording systems stopped functioning, while the plane was already at an altitude of about 152 metres (500 feet) and just 2km (1.2 miles) from the runway.

Seconds after the recording systems failed, the pilots declared Mayday due to a bird strike and attempted a belly landing.

The plane exploded in flames when it collided with a concrete embankment during its landing, prompting questions about why that type of barricade was in place at the end of the runway.

Last week, authorities said they would replace such concrete barriers at airports nationwide with “breakable structures”.

The captain had more than 6,800 flight hours, while the first officer had 1,650 hours, according to the report.

Both were killed in the crash, which was survived only by two flight attendants.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a UN agency, requires accident investigators to produce a preliminary report within 30 days of the accident and encourages a final report to be made public within 12 months.

South Korea’s Aviation and Railway Accident Investigation Board has shared its report with ICAO and Thailand, as well as the United States and France, which are the home states of the plane and engine manufacturers.

Thirteen years ago, Los Angeles Fire Department officials were bracing for the kind of dangerous winds that could drive flames across hillsides and canyons and tear through neighborhoods from Malibu to the Pacific Palisades to the San Fernando Valley.

The National Weather Service had issued red flag warnings of doomsday gusts as fierce as 90 miles per hour. Forecasters described the coming windstorm as a once in a five-to-10-year calamity.

So the LAFD began to marshal its defenses in the days before the arrival of the winds, taking the type of dramatic measures that the department failed to employ last week in advance of the Palisades fire, which followed wind alerts as bad or worse, due to the lack of recent rain, than those of late November 2011.

With the tempest expected to hit on Dec. 1 that year, LAFD commanders ordered up at least 40 extra fire engines for stations closest to the areas where the fire hazards were greatest, including the Palisades, The Times has learned through interviews and internal department records.

Among the additional rigs were more than 20 that were pre-deployed to those stations and 18 “ready reserve” engines that supplement the regular firefighting force in such emergencies, the records and interviews show.

“We could not take any chances on this, because the risk was too great,” said former LAFD Asst. Chief Patrick Butler, now chief of the Redondo Beach Fire Department, who led the agency’s preparations in 2011.

The LAFD commanders overseeing deployment before the Jan. 7 Palisades fire should have made similar preparations, Butler said.

“They underestimated the threat, even though the weather service had declared this a life-threatening wind event,” he said. “In my 35 years in the fire service, I have never heard the weather service use those words. It was a flashing danger sign.”

The weather service had advised that Jan. 7 and the next day could bring the strongest winds since that period in 2011. The warnings were even more dire because a lack of rain in recent months had left the wildlands particularly parched, said Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist for the weather service.

“The plants were extremely dry and the winds were extremely strong — it’s just the worst combination,” Kittell said.

As The Times reported last week, the LAFD decided not to tap several dozen available engines to join the fight against any fires fueled by the winds. A document obtained by The Times showed that commanders said “no” to deploying nine ready reserve engines to supplement nine other engines that had been pre-positioned the morning before the fire to the Valley and Hollywood.

Officials said they moved more engines “first thing in the morning” to cover northeast L.A. No extra engines were sent to the Palisades.

The department also opted against requiring a shift of about 1,000 firefighters to remain on duty rather than go home in the hours leading up to the fire. That decision made it more difficult to quickly staff the unused engines after the fire began to rage out of control, former LAFD chiefs told The Times.

Fire Chief Kristin Crowley and other top officials have defended their decisions, saying they had to juggle limited resources while continuing to handle 911 calls unrelated to the fire, which doubled the day it started, Jan. 7, because of wind damage elsewhere in the city. LAFD officials have also claimed that the firefighting effort was hampered by budget constraints and low water levels for some fire hydrants.

“We followed the system. We surged where we could surge,” Crowley said at a press conference on Wednesday. “Our firefighters pushed in, they did everything that they could.”

But the department faced those same challenges in 2011, and that did not stop commanders from devoting many more engines to the fire zones before the winds roared into the city, according to the records and interviews.

As it happened, the winds downed power lines and trees and caused other havoc, but they did not spark any wildfires. Butler said he considered his preparations in 2011 routine for such a frightening wind forecast, and that he had taken similar preemptive steps on about 30 other occasions during his years with the LAFD.

In most cases, no fires erupted, but Butler said commanders cannot gamble on that outcome. He cited long-standing LAFD directives requiring commanders to put in place whatever is needed to hit brush fires “hard and fast.”

Former LAFD Battalion Chief Rick Crawford told The Times that he would have taken the same approach to last week’s wind threat as Butler did in 2011. Crawford worked for the department for 33 years, including as a captain in the LAFD’s operations center, before leaving in 2024 for his current post as emergency and crisis management coordinator for the U.S. Capitol.

He said the department should have staffed at least 25 more engines the morning before the Palisades blaze and moved others to the potential fire zones. Recalling the outgoing shift of firefighters that day would have made more engine crews available, Crawford said.

“I would have been more offensive-minded,” he added.

Because of the punishing winds, he said, “you were going to have a major fire that day. But would it have been as deadly? Would it have been the most destructive in the history of Los Angeles? I don’t think so.

“Give yourself the best chance to minimize the damage.”

Crowley did not respond to an interview request for this story. She and a spokesperson also did not provide answers to a list of written questions from The Times about the LAFD’s preparations for and response to the Palisades fire.

When asked about the planning decisions at a news conference Wednesday, Mayor Karen Bass acknowledged that “the buck always stops with me,” but deferred questions to Crowley. Bass’ press office did not respond to an email requesting an interview with her for this story.

Deputy Chief Richard Fields, who was in charge of staffing and equipment decisions ahead of the Palisades fire, defended his plan for deployment as “appropriate for immediate response.” When asked about the more robust preparations in 2011, he said the department’s fleet of operable engines was larger back then.

“Today, I have zero reserve fleet,” Fields said. “Zero, because of the number of apparatus that we have in ill-repair.”

The Times found, however, that the department had a set of more than 40 engines that were available for crews, and officials chose to staff just five of them ahead of the fire.

Known internally as 200 Series engines, they are identical to other engines and placed around the city, usually paired with hook and ladder trucks, which do not carry water. In non-emergencies, they are staffed by a single engineer. When needed for wildfires, they carry four firefighters.

Crowley said that in a “perfect world,” she would have staffed the ready reserve engines, but budget cuts that eliminated half of the LAFD’s mechanic positions have left many inoperable.

But just two of the nine ready reserve engines listed on the planning document — the record in which officials said “no” to deploying them — were out of service and needed to be replaced, officials said. And seven were put into service at one point or another —most of them after the fire ignited. Some were pulled out of the maintenance shop.

Fire officials said that 40 out of a total of 195 engines at the LAFD were broken at the time of the Palisades fire. Had they been repaired, they said, it could have made a difference.

That doesn’t account for why the department didn’t staff and deploy all of the 200 Series engines that were available, Butler and other former LAFD chiefs said.

“The engines that were in the shop do not play into what they could have done,” Butler said.

The Palisades fire has burned nearly 24,000 acres and destroyed more than 3,500 homes and other structures, officials estimate. At least 10 people have died in the fire, according to the Los Angeles County coroner’s office and Sheriff’s Department.

The Eaton fire, which started after the Palisades blaze in the Altadena area, has blackened more than 14,000 acres, destroyed about 9,000 homes and other structures, and killed 17 people, officials say.

“It’s important to draw a lesson from this and not repeat what happened,” Butler said of the command decisions. “Firefighters on the ground, I guarantee you, are giving 100 percent of their effort despite all these challenges.”