A personal firefighting firm worker, employed to guard Rick Caruso’s Palisades Village mall from the Palisades Fireplace, stands close to a automobile on the mall in Pacific Palisades, California, on January 15, 2025. |Picture by ETIENNE LAURENT / AFP
PACIFIC Palisades, United States — On one facet of the road lie the ashes of ruined homes, misplaced to the massive blazes that defeated Los Angeles firefighters when hydrants ran dry.
On the opposite facet, a small village of outlets remains to be intact, watched over by tanker vehicles and a military of personal firemen.
Greater than per week after monumental blazes unfold unchecked by swathes of America’s second largest metropolis, questions are being requested about how a number of the metropolis’s super-rich appear to have survived nearly unscathed.
“All I can say is that we acquired employed and we’ve got been ordered to remain right here. I’m not allowed to inform you greater than that.” a person in a yellow and inexperienced uniform informed AFP in entrance of the business growth.
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An aerial picture exhibits utility crews working behind properties destroyed by the Palisades Fireplace alongside the Pacific Coast Freeway in Malibu, California, on January 15, 2025. | Picture by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP
The lads, together with their pick-up vehicles with Oregon license plates, had been stationed at property owned by billionaire developer Rick Caruso.
Their presence — defending shops hawking luxurious manufacturers like Yves Saint-Laurent, Isabel Marant and Erewhon — jars in a metropolis the place greater than two dozen individuals have died and hundreds of individuals have misplaced their properties.
“It sucks that there’s numerous politics concerned,” says one other of the lads. “We simply need to do the job and assist nevertheless we will.”
Caruso, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Los Angeles in 2022, didn’t reply to AFP requests for remark.
However in Pacific Palisades, a hang-out of Hollywood celebrities and the ultra-rich, he’s not the one one apparently utilizing his wealth to guard his property.
Different non-public firefighters stand guard in entrance of a number of the untouched princely villas that dot the hillsides.
‘Pays any quantity’
The sector made headlines in 2018 when Kim Kardashian and her then-husband Kanye West employed non-public firefighters to guard their lavish pad within the prosperous group of Hidden Hills, north of town.
The profiles of the 2 distinct areas that had been hit by final week’s blazes — rich Pacific Palisades and the extra blended Altadena — have already served to place a highlight on financial divisions in america.
The disparity was additional highlighted within the rapid aftermath of the fires when actual property developer Keith Wasserman attracted an avalanche of criticism after a social media put up.
“Does anybody have entry to non-public firefighters to guard our dwelling?” he wrote within the now-deleted put up.
“Must act quick right here. All neighbors homes burning. Pays any quantity.”
Such companies can price between $2,000 and $15,000 per day, US media has reported, citing native firms.
However even for these with the means, calling on non-public firefighters just isn’t all the time easy — most corporations are contracted by cities, authorities departments or insurance coverage firms.
In California, a legislation handed in 2018 limits how they will function.
They aren’t allowed to make use of flashing lights or badges just like these of public firefighters, and are required to coordinate with them.
Since this laws got here into pressure some firms have refused to serve people.
Whose water?
Non-public or public, firefighters all have the identical mission: “defending our group,” mentioned Jake Heflin, a firefighter from the publicly funded Lengthy Seaside Fireplace Division.
“If it’s performed accurately and performed in partnership and in live performance collectively, it may be very efficient,” Heflin mentioned.
However it might probably additionally create issues.
Taxpayer-funded companies mustn’t must focus “sources on taking good care of them, as a result of both they’re ill-equipped or ill-prepared they usually’ve gotten themselves right into a tough scenario,” he mentioned.
Firefighters “need to have these conversations properly forward of the occasion.”
How a lot coordination there was earlier than the disaster in Pacific Palisades, the place hydrants ran dry and a few homes had been successfully left to burn, is unclear.
For Jeff Ridgway, a 67-year-old Pacific Palisades resident who resorted to scooping buckets out of a swimming pool when the mains provide petered out, that could be a key query.
“Will probably be very attention-grabbing to know in the event that they used these hearth hydrants,” Ridgway informed AFP.
“I actually hope they introduced their very own water.”
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