Caruso: Palisades Village was built with zero combustible materials
Rick Caruso · No Priors Ep. 99 | With Rick Caruso · Jan 30, 2025 · at 6:28
Developer and former LA mayoral candidate Rick Caruso discusses how his Palisades Village development survived the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires.
0:00 / 0:12exact quote · 12.3s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Knowing that we were building in an area that was prone to fires. We did not build with any combustible materials. There's no combustible materials. Even what looks like wood is concrete formed to look like wood”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Rick Caruso
Caruso: Mayor Bass cut LAFD budget, leaving equipment mothballed in lots
“The city didn't even have enough equipment because they've underfunded the fire department for so long, and Mayor Bass cut even more out this last budget cycle That they had equipment mothballed in parking lots.”
Caruso: LA reservoir was drained for repairs despite high fire risk
“There's a whole reservoir that was empty. That was drained because they wanted to have repairs on it. Well, we had a fire in Malibu, 10 minutes from the Palisades fire, three weeks before. That's probably a pretty good sign that we needed to be prepared, and w…”
Caruso: Palisades hydrant failure was caused by empty reservoir, not broken pipes
“The hydrants are empty. We're not getting water. It had nothing to do with broken pipes. It had everything to do with the reservoirs not being filled. Everything up there is gravity flow. So those reservoirs draining are coming into the hydrants, and there's p…”
Caruso: Palisades fire was fueled by 40 years of unmanaged brush
“The Palisades fire was fueled by 40 years of brush that was never managed, and so you have an enormous amount of brush in those hills behind the Palisades, and when you had the winds coming up the city was not prepared adequately to deal with it.”
Caruso: Palisades Village deployed private firefighters, water systems, and fire retardant
“For fires, we immediately engage with companies that can pour retardant on the building, which we had out there. We had backup water systems out there, and we had a private firefighting department out there because we had been through this about six years prio…”