LAFD team tasked with preventing wildfires accused of corruption, laziness before blazes devastated city

The arm of the Los Angeles Fire Department in charge of preventing wildfires faced years of allegations of corruption, laziness, harassment and discrimination before the blazes that have devastated the city.It’s just one of the black marks against the LAFD — which include allegations that a deputy chief was drunk while overseeing a 2021 wildfire in the Pacific Palisades, the very same area devastated by the most destructive blaze in LA history this month.That firefighter was later cleared of wrongdoing by the department and given a $1.4 million payout.LAFD’s Fire Prevention Bureau is in charge of inspecting buildings, clearing brush and other measures to stop blazes before they start.But the bureau has a long history of faking inspections, lazy code enforcement and incompetent, untrained recruits — coupled with harsh retaliation for anyone who spoke up, a lawsuit settled in 2022 alleged.A 2015 LA Times investigation found that thousands of high-rise apartments, schools, churches, and other buildings had not been inspected for years.The following year, CBS2 caught inspectors filing fake, “phantom inspections” on an elementary school and a daycare center that had already closed down.LAFD fired Fire Prevention Bureau chief John Vidovich – only for him to slap his former employer with a retaliation lawsuit, claiming he was forced out after exposing a top-down culture of fraud and corner-cutting, according to the Times.The city eventually settled the suit for $800,000.Facing public outcry and swamped with a years-long backlog, the bureau packed its ranks with incompetent, untrained recruits and pushed them to conduct sloppy, incomplete inspections, according to a lawsuit filed in 2017 by six fire inspectors.The employees alleged when they spoke up about the shoddy inspections, they were branded “internal terrorists” and denied promotions and valued assignments.The plaintiffs, who are black, also alleged a longstanding culture of racism and sexism agains...