Episode 293: How LA Fought Twelve Fires in Fifteen Days with Chief Tony Marrone

Episode notes

Wind picks up, embers are flying...what stands between you and loss?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy.

Recorded live at the Institution of Fire Engineers (IFE) 2025 Conference alongside the AFAC, WAFA, and Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience Conference in Perth, Australia.

Chief Tony Marrone of Los Angeles County shares a hard truth from January 2025, when Los Angeles faced four major fires in one day and then eight more over the next two weeks. He walks through what happened on the ground, why ember cast overwhelmed even a large and ready fire service, and how communities can prepare for a future where wind driven wildfire meets dense neighborhoods.

With clarity and humility, Chief Marrone outlines three priorities that save lives and property. Manage fuels and the wildfire environment with the right mix of prescribed fire, mechanical work, and even goats where they make sense. Build and maintain defensible space, especially zone zero within five feet of the home. Harden homes with fire resistive roofs and siding, ember resistant vents, and tempered or double pane windows.

He also explains how technology supports smarter operations, from Alert California cameras and FireGuard satellites to FIRIS, helicopter command platforms, and citizen tools like Watch Duty.

This conversation is grounded in service, loss, and collaboration. It is a candid look at what worked, what did not, and where prevention must lead so a single company is not the last line of defense for every home on a windy night.

So take a listen to hear what he has to share.

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources.

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro, live from Perth
2. 0:55 From LA to Perth
3. 1:49 The LA fire siege: 12 fires in 15 days
4. 3:19 Wildfire-initiated community conflagration
5. 5:16 Three priorities: fuels, defensible space, home hardening
6. 8:17 The challenge of existing homes
7. 8:58 Living with fire and the First Peoples
8. 10:44 How 100% suppression backfired
9. 12:16 Goats, side mowers and fuels management
10. 13:47 Invasive plants as ember generators
11. 16:43 A changing climate and fire season
12. 18:04 Cameras, satellites and apps
13. 20:43 Words to live by: brothers and sisters in the fire service

Questions answered in this episode

How many fires did Los Angeles face during the January 2025 fire siege?

Chief Tony Marrone says Los Angeles had 12 fires over 15 days. On January 7th alone there were four major fires: the Sunset Fire, the Palisades, the Eaton, and the Hearst Fire, followed by eight more in the next 15 days.

Hear it at 1:49

How many structures were lost during the LA fires?

Chief Tony Marrone says over 10,000 structures were lost in 16 hours. By the end of the 15-day period, over 18,500 dwellings were damaged or destroyed.

Hear it at 20:53

What three things does Chief Marrone say are needed to prepare for future wildfires?

Better management of the forest and wildfire environment, better defensible space leveraging science, and home hardening to make structures resistant to wildfire using cost-effective methods.

Hear it at 3:19

Why are non-native plants a problem during wildfires?

Chief Tony Marrone explains that non-native species like palm trees, eucalyptus, and Italian cypress are terrible ember generators. During wind-driven wildfires they send embers downwind that start spot fires in communities, catching homes on fire on streets not yet impacted by the fire front.

Hear it at 13:57

What does Chief Marrone say about fire suppression policy in LA County?

He says the 100 percent suppression model, where the department tries to keep 95 percent of wildland fires to 10 acres or less, has done a disservice over time. Removing fire from the natural environment for 50 or 70 years creates situations where wind or topography-driven fires become almost impossible to put out.

Hear it at 10:04

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 293 transcript

How LA Fought Twelve Fires in Fifteen Days with Chief Tony Marrone

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Chief Tony Marrone

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to our podcast mini-series recorded live at the institution of fire engineers, 20, 25 conference in Perth, Australia, alongside the AFAC, WAFA and the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience conferences with over 28 conversations with fire chiefs, engineers, and emergency community to the rise of

[0:55] Chief Tony Marrone: just basically right across the Pacific, it's not that far. Yeah and then from Sydney to Perth, but what I've, but what I now that I've arrived is the West Coast of Australia is much like the U.S. I think the West Coast is the best coast, you know, as an LA fire chief and an LA firefighter, I find a lot more in common with the people of Western Australia.

[1:18] Kevin Sofen: I can relate. I grew up in LA, but now I actually live in Chicago and I joke that Midwest best coast, but my brother who lives on the Strand in Manhattan Beach would not agree with that. But yeah, also, I went the other way. I went from Chicago to Qatar to Perth because it was actually surprising when you find out that Sydney to Perth is actually longer than LA to New York.

[1:38] Chief Tony Marrone: It was a long flight, but I'm happy to be here.

[1:39] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, well it's good to be here. So you are here, we're here in the IFE live podcast booth and we're here at the IFE show in conjunction with AFAC. You're giving a presentation today or tomorrow?

[1:49] Chief Tony Marrone: It'll be tomorrow on Thursday. We're gonna talk about the challenges of the LA fire siege. Tuesday, January 7th, Los Angeles changed. We had four major fires in one day. We had the Sunset Fire, the Palisades, the Eaton, and then the Hearst Fire. Little did we know that in the next 15 days, we were gonna have eight more fires for a total of 12 fires. It certainly was a fire siege for that 15 day period. The LA Fire Service and Public Safety came together on the day of January 7th, and then the nation came to our help. [inaudible 2:21]

[2:47] Kevin Sofen: ago, and then now seeing them a couple months, later, just gone. Yeah. And obviously there was just like, it was devastating on a lot of friends. But I'm curious in terms of, you know, where we're at now in terms of, again, it's a little bit more than six months removed, but maybe to kind of go back to, you know, that exact time. And then, you know, the couple weeks after of, you know, what you're willing to share in regards to kind of what happened and then sort of, you know, how we're maybe really looking at applying some lessons learned to continue to make sure that we're gonna not let this disaster that happened go to waste.

[3:19] Chief Tony Marrone: Absolutely, and that's really what's brought me here is I wanna share our LA story with the people of Australia. It can happen anywhere. I believe that I was a little bit naive when it came to a wildfire initiated community conflagration. And that's the new term used for an urban conflagration because not every locality that's impacted by wildfire or I didn't think that could happen in metropolitan Los Angeles County because I just thought we were too strong and we were too big. We have 9,500 firefighters assigned in Los Angeles County between 30 different fire agencies. We have over 500 fire stations. And I just thought that mother nature, a natural disaster combined with fire, these hurricane force winds combined with fire. I didn't think that they could overwhelm us, But we were certainly outgunned and overwhelmed on January 7th, we called for help couldn't come fast enough to stop the absolute destruction at the Palisades fire caused and that the Eaton fire caused. The unincorporated area of Altadena has been decimated. You know, 45,000 people live in that community. And they're still traumatized by the loss, the loss of life, the loss of a structures, we lost over 10,000 structures in 16 hours. It was absolutely unbelievable, but we, as a fire service, we need to acknowledge that happened and we need to prepare for the future. And preparation is going to take place on many different fronts. I don't think it's just about building more fire stations and hiring more firefighters. We actually really need to do three things. We need to do a better job of managing the forest and the wildfire fire environment. We need to have better defensible space. We need to leverage science to come up with better ways to make sure that every community has defensible space. And lastly, we need home hardening. We have to harden our homes against wildfire. We also need the assistance of scientists to figure out how to best do that for the cheapest price, because we're never going to have enough firefighters to have a fire engine and a firefighter assigned to every structure that's being impacted during these wildfire initiated community conflagrations, especially when they're accompanied by high winds that are 70 to 100 miles an hour, upwards maybe even of 150 kilometers per hour. There's just no stopping those fires.

[6:14] Kevin Sofen: So I wanna double click into those three. let a hundred little things [inaudible 6:37]

[7:05] Chief Tony Marrone: or embers to enter into a structure, that you have ember resistant vents, or vents that automatically close five feet of your structure to include fences but for existing construction that doesn't conform. What do you tell a homeowner if they have a set of rose bushes directly in front of their house adjacent to a wall that has a window above? How do you explain to them that during a wind-driven wildfire that embers could dry out that rosebush, ignite that rosebush, and that rosebush could break your windows, catch your curtains on fire, and burn your home down? I think the big challenge is going to be on existing nonconforming. I think that we're going to be able to put into place codes and ordinances and processes that guarantee that newly constructed communities are much more resistant to wildfire than the ones that existed before. But what do we do about all of those communities that already exist? How do we make sure and prepare them for a disaster where your local fire service can't guarantee that they're going to have an engine on every street or an engine in front of every house that's being impacted? That's when I really fall back on better forest and wildfire management, fuels management, and better defensible space.

[8:58] Kevin Sofen: So let's dive into that a little bit more, and I think that's a challenge. I mean, I was hearing Richard Mills talk about some of the lessons learned, and some of the policy impacts of Grenfell. A lot of these policies that are being implemented aren't going into effect till 2028. Grenfell happened in 2014. There's still a couple more years before 2028, and all these buildings are going to continue to be built on codes of decades prior. We have these communities that exist today, and we're not just going to bulldoze them right now, we need to continue to find a way to live in harmony between humans and the land. But that ties into your point of fuels management, defensible space. What does that look like? And I know that also ties into this, not all fire is bad fire. I think that's a big thing I've heard.

[9:39] Chief Tony Marrone: Yes, it does tie into that.

[9:39] Kevin Sofen: So, and then there was also maybe a, I don't know if it was a touchy thing, but the whole Smokey the Bear of that dynamic of it's been one of the greatest campaigns, but then there's also Smokey is a controversial figure maybe it's sometimes demonizing fire, but with this forest management and living with fire and how we continue to, we evolve this relationship with fire. within communities that exist right now. Tell me more about that. Break it down.

[10:04] Chief Tony Marrone: Well, you know, I was able to sit into the opening of the General Session, and it wasn't lost on me that Australians and Australia have a deep connection with the First Peoples that were here. And it's very similar to what's going on in the United States, specifically in California. Before the organized fire service in California, fires moved naturally through the environment and they were managed by the First Peoples. The First Peoples looked at fire as being something beneficial, and they utilized fire to the benefit of their communities. However, times have changed. now that we have communities that are that have interface with the wild land or that are in the intermix of the wild land, we've actually done ourselves a disservice in the long term by having a 100% suppression model. Every wildfire that breaks out in LA County, we try to suppress it. We try to keep 95% of our wildland bushfires to 10 acres or less, 2.5 hectares or less. That has done us a disservice over time because now we've removed fire from the natural environment and we have a very long interval, 50 years, 70, no fire in an area. So when a fire does get established and is driven by wind or topography, it's almost impossible to put out. We've actually created a situation that's very difficult for us to contain fire now when it begins because we our challenges, prescriptive fire or fuels management through mechanical means or biological means, either removing it with side mowers or m

[12:16] Kevin Sofen: I saw some reports and I've always been fascinated by alternative ways to address challenges with leveraging some lessons from indigenous persons and first people and native communities and not only the dynamic of fire, but leveraging goats. Seems like a crazy idea, but I know there are these goats as a service model where you could bring a goats and be able to clear some of these landscapes. And it sounds crazy, but it's a very tangible, proactive action that we can do on the reg. So with that example of goats and these side mowers, what are some of these other like tangible examples like that you see are very important within this kind of continued living with fire, especially when you have these communities that, Again, we can't just clear out and do a prescriptive fire in this entire neighborhood because there's communities that live there now. How do we continue to find that balance with examples like using goats to ideally live in harmony with the land the best we can?

[13:11] Chief Tony Marrone: Yeah, no, I really think that, you know, that the January 7th fire in Los Angeles has caused us to once again really focus on fuel and forest management and defensible space, acknowledging that sort of the non-native invasive species that we've allowed into our environment in Los Angeles like palm trees or Italian cypress or ivy or e because these non-natives are absolute, terrible ember generators during wildfire.

[13:47] Kevin Sofen: Explain more about that. Why are these invasives such a challenge and have created such a problem within the prevention and response to wild land, particularly wind-driven wildfires.

[13:57] Chief Tony Marrone: Well, you know, during a wind driven wildfire, [inaudible 13:58] from the fire front to those brand new spot fires that are downwind in communities. Many times they're catching flammable material that's adjacent to a home on fire. That fire grows, gets into the attic, burns down the home on a street that's not even really being impacted by the fire front at that time. Firefighters love to do fire front following. We usually go to where it's the worst, where the fire's actually coming through the community. We don't have the ability to recognize downwind where those fires are starting. Many of them are from the flying brands that are generated by those palm trees and by those eucalyptus trees that burn so easily. But they're not part of our natural environment. That's another situation that we've created in Los Angeles that makes it that much more difficult.

[15:06] Kevin Sofen: They look pretty.

[15:06] Chief Tony Marrone: They look beautiful, but how do you tell somebody you can't have a hedged row Italian Cyprus, or you can't have these palm trees on your property, or that eucalyptus tree really doesn't belong on your property. It wouldn't be here naturally. It's going to create a challenge for trying to protect your structures. But I really believe that the money and the time that we are going to spend should be spent on the prevention side and not really the response side. Of course, we have to have better responses. We have to leverage technology to allow firefighters to fight fire more efficiently and effectively. But really, the savings, the savings of lives and the savings of communities, I think is going to be done on the front end. It's really a partnership fire engineers to make sure that we're building homes and communities that are going to be fire resistant. it's managing those forests and those wildlands in a better way to try to replicate as best possible, you know, that natural fire that would have occurred hundreds of years ago that was managed by the First Peoples. I think that if we put most of our time and effort into the prevention side, that's going to pay dividends because we have a finite amount of property tax that we can use in LA County for the fire department. We already have a budget of $1.8 billion annually. Building more fire stations and hiring more firefighters is not going to prevent our January 7th, our version of Black Saturday that we had in Los Angeles. We've been battling this for years, but we also have to acknowledge that the changing climate has created fires recently that are more destructive, they last longer, and they've been starting in months that aren't traditionally known as brushfire season. To have a fire on January 7th was not common in Los Angeles. We were prepared. we all really came together to battle these very two destructive blazes. And, you know, I really thank the firefighters that came from near and far to assist us during that 15-day period.

[17:31] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, kudos to all the fire service members and especially my future sister-in-law's brother, Bucky. He's a firefighter in Manhattan Beach. And I don't want to say it's funny, but we were talking in December in Manhattan Beach and some of these kind of sleepy communities that you were kind of responding to a lot of EMS calls And it took something like this to kind of drive the need to have a large fire response to, again, a lot of these firefighters, sometimes they And that'd be remiss on the Smart Firefighting Podcast, what we're doing with IAP. Then I asked you about something with tech, and there's been a lot of conversations here at the show as well as the whole XPRIZE initiative about how do we use satellites, how do we use terrestrial cameras, how do we use drones in different ways too I know in warfare they talk about how can we create an unfair advantage over the enemy. And in this situation, not saying that all fire is the enemy, but some of these fires can be perceived as enemy. How can we leverage? What are your thoughts in terms of LAFD's road map? I'm from L.A. and I'm from L.A. County. What are some of your thoughts in regards to how satellites, different early detection systems, and drones can play a role within dealing with some of these wind-driven wildfires from the before, during, and after stage?

[18:51] Chief Tony Marrone: Yeah, you know, we do leverage technology in Los Angeles County and we live in California because we have so many great tech companies there. We already utilize the alert California wildfire cameras that employ AI to detect the start of a wildfire that are able to differentiate between us. a one-story single-family dwelling that's on fire, a car fire or a wildland fire. There's 1,100 of those cameras throughout the state of California. Many of them are in LA County. We actually have some amazing video of the start of the Palisades fire that was caught on those alert-California cameras. We also FireGuard, the FireGuard satellite system. We unit commanders use that could actually follow the fire front from the satellite images that are being sent out. We use Inter state employs. And then, you know, when you look at the app side, we have apps on our phone, like Watch Duty that have real time information being uploaded regarding all the fires in the Western United States. And I use that Watch Duty app all the time. So a huge shout out to that C3 for what they've done. When it comes to providing a situational awareness, all firefighters have citizen Watch Duty and also PulsePoint. So we are using these perhaps to help give us a better picture of what's going on, not only in our county, but the counties that are surrounding us.

[20:32] Kevin Sofen: Tony, I think we could continue to quite deep into all these conversations, and I know you've got other places to be today.

[20:42] Chief Tony Marrone: I'll come to my presentation tomorrow.

[20:43] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, no, I will, but I want to kind of end it here with something I've been asking everyone, but, you know, is there any sort of quote or words of wisdom or something that you live by within your personal life, or something that you've kind of applied to the fire service that you could share with us today?

[20:53] Chief Tony Marrone: You know, I don't have any formalized quotes, and maybe I should look one up and memorize it, but you know, we're all brothers and sisters in the fire service. And the and the, 39 years of the [inaudible 21:09] people that come from Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, [inaudible 21:42] prepared enough to lose, you know, a 50,000 acres total between all 12 fires over a 15- day period, the tragic loss of 31 lives and over 18,500 dwellings damaged or destroyed. It was absolutely unimaginable. Mother Nature was in the driver's seat and we did the best we could, but we still lost people and structures. And that's why I really want to focus on the preparation and the prevention side because we have to do a better job. of managing that wildfire ecosystem. We have to do a better job when it comes to defensible space and non-native vegetation. And we really have to make sure that people's homes are hardened and stand on them. So a fire company isn't necessarily, doesn't necessarily have to be there for your home to survive an ember cast or a wind driven wildfire.

[22:47] Kevin Sofen: Chief Marrone, well said. Well, there's no time like now to continue to take action on this. I really credit your leadership and humility and work that you've implemented to move forward in the right kind of manner here I know it's still very fresh and the wounds the wounds are recent, but there's no city No more resilient place in LA and I look forward to coming home again soon Maybe I'll Will have to cross paths in LA.

[23:11] Chief Tony Marrone: Yeah, absolutely and I just really appreciate everything they do very much Yeah, thank you for letting us tell appreciate.

[23:17] Kevin Sofen: Thanks Chief. Take care And that's a wrap for this episode of the Smart Firefighting podcast. If you found value in this conversation, hit like, leave a comment, share it to someone and tell us what you enjoyed most. Take care and thanks for listening.