Rick Caruso on California's Collapse: Broken Leadership, LA Wildfire Failures & the Fix

The session opens with a run of short lines that set its terms. Rick Caruso is introduced as a developer whose properties are places where "it's safe, it's clean, you want to bring your kids." Running a city is described as "running a business for the benefit of the residents," and the Palisades fire is framed as a test that ideology failed. The opening also floats the idea that Caruso has "a golden road in the governor's race if he wants it."

Ideology did not save the palisades.

What's predictable is preventable.

After Caruso is welcomed on stage, the questioning starts from the fires, described as nine months earlier. The questions are openly hostile to Mayor Karen Bass, calling her "so incompetent," and contrast her with Caruso's record at the Grove and his decision to bring water trucks and private firefighters to the Pacific Palisades as the fires approached.

The account of the Palisades preparation starts with the remark that leaders should stay in the city during a crisis. It then traces the approach back to a resort project in Montecito, where fires threatened a construction site. A team member named Banyan proposed bringing in private firefighters, private water trucks and fire retardant.

The reason given is about how public resources get allocated. City and county firefighters should protect homes first, so a commercial owner should supply its own protection rather than draw firefighters away from residential areas. The speaker calls this being "a good citizen." The Palisades property is described as built with non-combustible materials and designed with no open vents an ember could enter. The speaker also claims that most homes in the burn areas were lost from interior ignition, but gives no source for the figure.

About 90% of the homes in the Palisades and Altadena burned from the inside out.