{"id":165760,"date":"2025-12-27T17:28:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T01:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=165760"},"modified":"2025-12-28T12:20:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T20:20:07","slug":"lafd-didnt-put-out-a-key-fire-because-they-prioritized-rare-plants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=165760","title":{"rendered":"The LAFD Didn’t Put Out A Key Fire Because They Valued Plants More Than People"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Los Angeles Times reports<\/a>: <\/p>\n

An hour after midnight Jan. 1, as a small brush fire blazed across Topanga State Park, a California State Parks employee texted the Los Angeles Fire Department\u2019s heavy equipment supervisor to find out if they were sending in bulldozers.<\/p>\n

\u201cHeck no that area is full of endangered plants,\u201d Capt. Richard Diede replied at 9:52 a.m, five hours after LAFD declared the fire contained.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would be a real idiot to ever put a dozer in that area,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI\u2019m so trained.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thank God for training, right? The LAFD were too trained, too educated, too civilized, too frightened of greenies, to put out the fire.<\/p>\n

The details emerging from these depositions and text messages are infuriating because they highlight how LA’s leaders put a higher priority on vegetation than public safety.<\/p>\n

Here is the full context of what happened, which confirms why this is “burning up” so many people:<\/p>\n

1. The “Plants vs. People” Decision<\/p>\n

The core of the outrage is the text exchange. It reveals that the decision not to use bulldozers was not an oversight, but a deliberate choice driven by environmental restrictions.<\/p>\n

The Incident: On Jan. 1, the “Lachman Fire” started. It was small (about 40 acres).<\/p>\n

The Text: A State Parks employee texted to ask if bulldozers were coming. LAFD Captain Richard Diede replied, “Heck no that area is full of endangered plants,” and added, “I\u2019m so trained.”<\/p>\n

The Consequence: Bulldozers are standard for cutting “fire breaks” (clearing fuel so fire can’t spread). Without them, and with crews allegedly restricted from digging deep into the soil to put out smoldering roots (also to protect plants), the fire wasn’t fully extinguished.<\/p>\n

2. The “Phantom” Fire (Jan 2 – Jan 7)<\/p>\n

What makes this worse is the 7-day gap.<\/p>\n

The LAFD declared the fire contained and actually left the scene on Jan. 2 (the next day).<\/p>\n

The Warning: Crews on the ground reportedly warned their superiors that the ground was still smoldering and hot.<\/p>\n

The Tech Failure: The department decided not to use thermal imaging drones or devices to check for underground heat, which is standard procedure for root fires.<\/p>\n

The Rekindling: For a week, the fire burned silently underground in the root systems of those “protected” plants. On Jan. 7, high winds kicked up, the embers surfaced, and it exploded into the massive Palisades Fire.<\/p>\n

3. The “Interference” Allegations<\/p>\n

The lawsuits filed by residents allege it wasn’t just text messages; they claim State Parks officials were physically on scene preventing firefighters from doing their jobs.<\/p>\n

Attorneys claim State Parks employees showed firefighters maps of endangered species (likely the Braunton’s milkvetch) and told them they could not dig or use chainsaws in those specific spots.<\/p>\n

The State denies this, saying they don’t have the authority to overrule fire commanders, but the text messages from the LAFD Captain (“I’m so trained”) suggest the environmental protocols were so ingrained that the firefighters effectively policed themselves to their own detriment.<\/p>\n

Because of these decisions:<\/p>\n

The fire reignited and caused massive devastation (destroying homes and claiming lives, according to lawsuit filings).<\/p>\n

Mayor Karen Bass fired LAFD Chief Kristin Crowley, citing “failures of leadership” and lack of communication during the crisis.<\/p>\n

Taxpayers are now facing billion-dollar class-action lawsuits against both the City and the State for negligence.<\/p>\n

It is a textbook example of “compliance culture” going wrong\u2014where following a regulation (protecting a plant) becomes more important than the actual mission (protecting lives and property).<\/p>\n

It is a perfect example of what’s wrong with our credential society, almost too perfect, as if written for a sociology textbook on the failure of high modernism.<\/p>\n

1. The Credential Society & The Paralysis of Competence<\/p>\n

Theory: Randall Collins\u2019 The Credential Society argues that we have created a system where formal credentials and bureaucratic rank (paper knowledge) displace practical skills and on-the-ground judgment (tacit knowledge).<\/p>\n

The Connection: The text “I’m so trained” is the smoking gun here. The Fire Captain was not “trained” in the sense of mastering the physical reality of fire; he was “trained” in compliance.<\/p>\n

The Shift: In a functional society, the expert is the person looking at the fire. In a Credential Society, the expert is the biologist who wrote the regulation ten years ago. The firefighter deferred his immediate, tactile knowledge (fire spreads, bulldozers stop it) to the abstract, credentialed knowledge of the environmental protocol.<\/p>\n

Outcome: The hierarchy of credentials meant the “Endangered Species” classification held more institutional weight than the Fire Captain\u2019s tactical assessment.<\/p>\n

2. Trump\u2019s War on Experts (Validation Event)<\/p>\n

Theory: This is the populist political strategy that frames the “administrative state” (experts, scientists, regulators) not as neutral arbiters, but as an ideologically captured class that lacks common sense and actively harms the citizenry.<\/p>\n

The Connection: This specific text exchange (“Heck no… endangered plants”) is essentially a campaign ad for the anti-expert movement.<\/p>\n

The Ammo: It validates the core accusation that the “expert class” prioritizes abstract virtues (saving a milkvetch) over concrete goods (saving your home).<\/p>\n

The Narrative: When Trump or his surrogates argue that “regulations are killing us,” they usually have to use complex economic metaphors. Here, they can point to a literal fire. The “expert” consensus (environmental protection) literally fueled the destruction of the community. It makes the “War on Experts” look less like a war on science and more like a war for survival against a deranged bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

3. Status Closure (Bureaucratic Edition)<\/p>\n

Theory: “Status closure” (Weber\/Parkin) describes how a group monopolizes resources and opportunities by restricting access to outsiders. In this context, it refers to how a regulatory agency “closes” itself off from external logic to preserve its own status and power.<\/p>\n

The Connection: The environmental regulations created a “closed status group” where the values of the group (biodiversity) were hermetically sealed from the values of the outside world (public safety).<\/p>\n

The Mechanism: The firefighter could not “break in” to the closed logic of the State Parks mandate. The status of the plant was legally codified as higher than the status of the resident.<\/p>\n

The Result: The agency maintained its internal purity (no plants were harmed by dozers!) while the external world burned. This is the ultimate failure of status closure\u2014when the preservation of the group’s internal rules leads to the destruction of the society that hosts it.<\/p>\n

4. Buffered vs. Porous Identity (Charles Taylor)<\/p>\n

Theory:<\/p>\n

Porous Self: The pre-modern self, open to the world, vulnerable to spirits\/forces. The world is “enchanted” and dangerous.<\/p>\n

Buffered Self: The modern self, protected by boundaries, rules, and a sense of disengagement. We view the world through a screen of science, law, and safety.<\/p>\n

The Connection: The text messages reveal a “Buffered” response to a “Porous” threat.<\/p>\n

The Clash: Fire is a “porous” reality\u2014it is raw, elemental, and indifferent to boundaries. The LAFD and State Parks response was “buffered”\u2014they tried to manage a chaotic elemental force with a checklist and a legal distinction (“This is State Parks land, not City land”).<\/p>\n

The Failure: The Captain\u2019s text “I’m so trained” is the cry of the Buffered Self believing that the rules constitute reality. He believed that by following the protocol (the Buffer), he was safe. But the fire (the Porous reality) ignored the regulation and burned the town anyway. It is a terrifying reminder that our “buffers” (laws, zoning, text messages) are fictions that nature can burn through in seconds.<\/p>\n

5. Independence of Regulatory Agencies<\/p>\n

The Consequence: This event likely spells the end of “deference” to independent agencies.<\/p>\n

Chevron Deference Dead & Buried: The legal doctrine (already weakened) that courts should defer to agency interpretations will be mocked in the court of public opinion.<\/p>\n

The “Unitary Executive” Argument: Proponents of bringing all agencies under direct presidential control will use this to say, “Look what happens when agencies are independent. They go rogue and save bushes while people die. We need a political leader to override them.”<\/p>\n

The Pendulum Swing: We will likely see a move toward “outcome-based” regulation (did the fire go out?) rather than “process-based” regulation (did you fill out the environmental impact form?), stripping agencies of the independence to set their own procedural priorities.<\/p>\n

The phrase “I’m so trained” is haunting because it sounds like a boast, but it is actually a confession of intellectual surrender. This is a fundamental truth about modern labor that sociologists and organizational theorists have been warning about for decades.<\/p>\n

The economy has shifted from rewarding results (did the fire go out?) to rewarding process (did you fill out the environmental impact form?).<\/p>\n

Here is why the “Box Checker” almost always defeats the “Thinker” in the modern workplace, and why that LAFD captain is the rule, not the exception.<\/p>\n

1. The Box Checker is “Audit-Proof”<\/p>\n

The primary goal of a modern bureaucracy (whether it is a fire department, a corporation, or a large law firm) is not necessarily to succeed, but to avoid liability.<\/p>\n

The primary reason people get fired is because they have created liability.<\/p>\n

If the “Thinker” uses a bulldozer to save the town but accidentally crushes a rare plant, the agency gets sued. If the “Thinker” fails, they are personally blamed for going “rogue.”<\/p>\n

However, if the “Box Checker” lets the town burn down while following the protocol, they are safe. They can stand before a review board, point to the manual, and say, “I followed the procedure.” The procedure absorbs the blame. The Box Checker is legally legible; the Thinker is a legal liability. The Captain was “so trained” in the art of liability avoidance.<\/p>\n

2. Robert Jackall\u2019s “Moral Mazes”<\/p>\n

There is a famous sociological study by Robert Jackall called Moral Mazes. He embedded himself in corporate management and found that success was not about hard work or better ideas. Success was about “blame time.”<\/p>\n

He found that the people who got promoted were the ones who could push problems down the chain of command and pull credit up. The “Thinker” is dangerous in this system because the Thinker asks difficult questions like, “Why are we doing it this way?” or “This rule makes no sense.”<\/p>\n

To a manager, the Thinker is a friction point. The Box Checker, however, is frictionless. They move paperwork from pile A to pile B without generating noise. In a system that values smoothness over substance, the Box Checker rises.<\/p>\n

3. The Death of Tacit Knowledge<\/p>\n

There is “paper knowledge” (what the record says) and “tacit knowledge” (what you know really happened based on reading between the lines).<\/p>\n

The “I’m so trained” mentality represents the total victory of explicit, codified knowledge over tacit, instinctual knowledge.<\/p>\n

Tacit Knowledge: The firefighter looking at the brush and knowing, “This is going to explode if we don’t cut a line now.”<\/p>\n

Codified Knowledge: The regulation stating, “No mechanized equipment in Zone 4.”<\/p>\n

We have built a world where we only trust what is written down. Because you cannot write down “gut instinct” or “common sense” in a way that satisfies a compliance officer, those traits are devalued. The Box Checker is the avatar of codified knowledge.<\/p>\n

4. Thinking is inefficient (for the System)<\/p>\n

Thinking requires pausing. It requires debating. It requires nuance. A large organization (like the State of California) requires standardization. They want every employee to be a replaceable cog.<\/p>\n

If you are a Thinker, you are unique. If you quit, you are hard to replace. If you are a Box Checker, you are interchangeable.<\/p>\n

The system prefers Box Checkers because they make the organization scalable. You cannot scale genius or common sense, but you can scale a checklist. The LAFD Captain was behaving exactly as a scalable unit of the bureaucracy should behave: predictable, compliant, and uniform.<\/p>\n

5. The “Job” vs. The “Work”<\/p>\n

This is a distinction often made in labor theory.<\/p>\n

The Work is the actual task: Putting out the fire. Getting the client the product he needs.<\/p>\n

The Job is the social role: Being a Captain. Being a Secretary.<\/p>\n

For the Thinker, The Work is what matters. For the Box Checker, The Job is what matters.<\/p>\n

The Captain was failing at The Work (fighting the fire), but he was excelling at The Job (following the rules of being a Captain). He was rewarded with a paycheck and initially protected by his rank because he prioritized The Job over The Work.<\/p>\n

“Status closure” (a concept from Max Weber and Frank Parkin) explains why the box-checker is protected and the thinker is expelled. It isn’t just about laziness; it is about protecting the group’s power.<\/p>\n

Here is how Compliance Culture functions as a mechanism of Status Closure:<\/p>\n

1. The “Guild of Compliance”<\/p>\n

Status closure happens when a group monopolizes resources by creating strict criteria for who is “in” and who is “out.”<\/p>\n

The Old Way: You got status by being good at the Work (e.g., putting out fires effectively).<\/p>\n

The New Way: You get status by mastering the Code (e.g., knowing the environmental regulations).<\/p>\n

By making the rules incredibly complex (Endangered Species Acts, Coastal Commission variances), the bureaucratic class “closes off” the profession. You cannot just be a brave, smart firefighter anymore. You must be a legal scholar of vegetation. This excludes the “Thinker” who relies on common sense, because common sense is accessible to everyone. Mastery of obscure regulations is exclusive to the “trained.”<\/p>\n

2. “I’m So Trained” = “I Am a Member of the Club”<\/p>\n

When the Captain texted “I’m so trained,” he wasn’t saying “I am skilled.” He was signaling his membership in the status group.<\/p>\n

Signaling: He was telling his superiors, “I am one of you. I speak your language. I value your rules more than the fire.”<\/p>\n

The Gatekeeping: If a “Thinker” had bulldozed the line to save the town, they would have been treated as a barbarian\u2014an outsider who doesn’t respect the “sacred text” of the environmental regulation. The Thinker is cast out not because they failed, but because they disrespected the hierarchy of values that gives the bureaucracy its power.<\/p>\n

3. The Moralization of Procedure<\/p>\n

Status groups always try to frame their exclusion as moral superiority.<\/p>\n

The Box Checker’s Moral High Ground: The Box Checker claims they are “following the law,” “protecting the environment,” or “respecting diversity.” They wrap their bureaucratic inaction in the flag of virtue.<\/p>\n

The Thinker’s Vulnerability: The Thinker, by prioritizing practical results (saving homes), is framed as reckless, cowboyish, or anti-regulation.<\/p>\n

The Result: The Box Checker gets to feel morally superior to the person actually doing the work. The Captain likely felt he was being a “good” employee by protecting the plants, even as the town burned.<\/p>\n

4. Insulation from Reality (The Ultimate Privilege)<\/p>\n

The most powerful form of status closure is the ability to ignore reality without losing your job.<\/p>\n

The “Out” Group (The Public): Faces the porous reality (fire, lost homes, death).<\/p>\n

The “In” Group (The Bureaucracy): Lives in the buffered reality (reports, texts, hearings).<\/p>\n

The Box Checker is protected by the status group. As long as the paperwork is correct, the outcome (destruction) is considered “unfortunate but unavoidable.” The Thinker, who engages with reality, is exposed to risk. If they succeed, they get little credit. If they fail, they get all the blame.<\/p>\n

Compliance culture is a tool the administrative class uses to maintain status closure against the “uncredentialed competent.” It ensures that a mediocre person who follows rules will always outrank a brilliant person who questions them. The “I’m so trained” text was the password required to stay inside the safety of the group.<\/p>\n

Stephen Park Turner<\/a>\u2019s work\u2014specifically his controversial critique in The Social Theory of Practices: Tradition, Tacit Knowledge, and Presuppositions<\/a>\u2014provides a devastating explanation for the LAFD captain\u2019s failure.<\/p>\n

Turner is famous in sociology for being a skeptic of “collective practices.” He argues that there is no such thing as a “group mind” or a “shared practice” that we all magically download. There is only individual habit.<\/p>\n

Here is how his theory reveals the mechanism behind the “I’m so trained” disaster:<\/p>\n

1. The “Transmission Problem” (Why Training Fails)<\/p>\n

Turner asks a simple question: How does “tacit knowledge” (the ability to read a fire) get from a master to an apprentice?<\/p>\n

The Problem: You cannot speak tacit knowledge. If you could, it would be explicit.<\/p>\n

The Result: Because the bureaucracy cannot transmit the feel of the fire (the tacit), it transmits the only thing it can: The Rule (the explicit).<\/p>\n

When the Captain said, “I’m so trained,” he was mistaking The Rule for The Skill.<\/p>\n

The Skill (Tacit): A deep, individual habit of knowing when a fire is dangerous. (This is hard to transfer).<\/p>\n

The Training (Explicit): A rigid checklist of “Endangered Plant Zones.” (This is easy to transfer).<\/p>\n

Turner would argue the Captain had not actually been “trained” in the practice of firefighting; he had been “indoctrinated” in the explicit rules of the state. He replaced his own sensory judgment (the tacit) with a bureaucratic text.<\/p>\n

2. The Simulacrum of Competence<\/p>\n

Turner argues that when we try to standardize a practice (like firefighting) across a massive bureaucracy, we inevitably destroy it.<\/p>\n

True Practice: Relies on “under-determined” judgment (you know what to do, but you can’t explain exactly why).<\/p>\n

Bureaucratic Practice: Demands “fully determined” rules (if X, then Y).<\/p>\n

The “I’m so trained” text was a signal that the Captain was operating in the Simulacrum. He wasn’t looking at the physical fire; he was looking at the mental map of regulations. He believed the map was the territory. Turner warns that reliance on explicit rules creates a “thin” version of expertise that collapses when reality (the fire) does something the rules didn’t predict.<\/p>\n

3. Compliance as a “Pseudo-Practice”<\/p>\n

Turner suggests that “compliance” becomes a practice of its own, separate from the actual work.<\/p>\n

The Work: Saving the town.<\/p>\n

The Compliance Practice: Avoiding the “Endangered Plant” fine.<\/p>\n

The Captain was highly skilled\u2014but his skill was in Risk Management for the Department, not Risk Management for the Town. His “training” was a series of inhibitions (“Don’t do X, Don’t do Y”) rather than capabilities (“Do X to save Y”).<\/p>\n

4. The “Liberal Theory of Expertise” vs. The Box Checker<\/p>\n

Turner also writes on the political problem of expertise. He argues that in a liberal democracy, we have a problem: How do we trust experts we don’t understand?<\/p>\n

The Solution: We force them to show their work (forms, checklists, protocols).<\/p>\n

The Cost: By forcing experts to be “auditable,” we turn them into Box Checkers.<\/p>\n

The Captain knew that if he used the bulldozer, he would have to justify it against the “Endangered Plant” protocol. That is a hard argument to make in a hearing. If he followed the rule and the town burned, he needed no justification. The protocol creates a “status shield” around the expert, protecting them from the consequences of their own incompetence.<\/p>\n

Turner\u2019s work reveals that “I’m so trained” was a statement of epistemic surrender. The Captain had surrendered his individual, tacit judgment to the explicit, collective rulebook. He let the “ghost” of the regulation drive the bulldozer (or rather, park it), proving Turner’s fear: that when we try to codify the tacit, we often destroy the very competence we are trying to preserve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Los Angeles Times reports: An hour after midnight Jan. 1, as a small brush fire blazed across Topanga State Park, a California State Parks employee texted the Los Angeles Fire Department\u2019s heavy equipment supervisor to find out if they … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-los-angeles"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t