A campaign of The Overlooked Foundation Cal. Gov. Code §850.4
The burn scar of the January 1 Lachman Fire sat unmonitored for six days — then reignited in the wind as the Palisades Fire. Twelve dead. Nearly 7,000 structures gone. And under California Government Code §850.4, fire agencies hold absolute immunity for anything that goes wrong fighting a fire, no matter how negligent. No one can be held liable. The Six Days Act changes one sentence of that law.
The Six Days
The Palisades Fire did not come from nowhere. It came from a place the fire department had already been — a hillside they had already fought on, declared safe, and walked away from.
A brush fire — later determined to be intentionally set — burns roughly eight acres above Via La Costa in Pacific Palisades. Crews respond, declare the fire extinguished, and leave.
University camera footage captured a small fire appearing and disappearing on the same hillside before January 7. Forensic analysis indicates the fire smoldered underground in root systems and duff — a classic holdover — waiting for wind.
Under extreme Santa Ana winds, fire erupts from the Lachman burn scar. Within hours it becomes the Palisades Fire: 12 dead, 23,448 acres, roughly 6,800 structures destroyed — one of the most destructive fires in California history.
Eight days after losing his family home of thirty years, Overlooked Foundation founder Jeremy Wineberg articulates the holdover theory on ABC7 — the first public statement connecting the January 1 fire to the catastrophe.
Federal investigators conclude the Palisades Fire was a reignition of the January 1 Lachman Fire — the fire crews walked away from six days earlier.
The Los Angeles Superior Court, then the Court of Appeal, allow thousands of victims' lawsuits to proceed against the City and State — but only because the alleged failures happened before the firefight began. Anything that happens during one remains legally untouchable. That accident of timing is the entire difference between a day in court and no recourse at all.
Six days is not a gap in a log. It is an expanse of time in which the outcome could have been changed over and over.
The Law
Government Code §850.4 is what lawyers call an absolute immunity. It cannot be waived — courts have held it applies even when the government forgets to plead it. It doesn't ask whether the conduct was reasonable, reckless, or grossly negligent. It doesn't weigh outcomes. It simply closes the courthouse door.
"Neither a public entity, nor a public employee acting in the scope of his employment, is liable for any injury resulting from the condition of fire protection or firefighting equipment or facilities or… for any injury caused in fighting fires."
Plain English: no matter what goes wrong in a firefight — no matter how preventable — no one is accountable.
§850
No liability for failing to establish a fire department or provide fire protection service at all.
§850.2
No liability for failing to provide or maintain sufficient personnel, equipment, or other fire protection facilities — the statute that shields empty reservoirs and understaffed stations.
§850.4
No liability for any injury caused in fighting fires — including declaring a fire extinguished and abandoning the scene. Together, attorneys call these the "Fireman's Immunity Rule."
When paramedics respond to a heart attack, they're protected by qualified immunity: shielded for good-faith judgment calls, accountable for bad faith and gross negligence. That's Health & Safety Code §1799.107, and it has governed emergency medical services for over four decades — without breaking EMS, without bankrupting cities, without a wave of frivolous lawsuits.
Firefighting gets a different deal — total, unconditional immunity. Same emergencies. Same split-second judgment. Radically different accountability.
Health & Safety Code §1799.107
Immunity for actions taken in good faith. Exception for bad faith and gross negligence. Victims of egregious failures can be heard.
Accountability: qualified
Gov. Code §§850, 850.2, 850.4
Immunity for any injury caused in fighting fires — including failures of personnel, equipment, and protection. No exception. For anything.
Accountability: none
The Failure
Wildland firefighting has a doctrine for exactly this situation, and it has a name: "dead out." A fire isn't over when the flames stop — it's over when no heat remains. Until then, the standard practice across wildland agencies is mop-up and patrol: physically checking the scar for heat, verifying with thermal imaging, and returning — especially when dangerous wind is in the forecast.
None of this is exotic. It's the basic craft of finishing a fire.
Whether these failures amount to gross negligence is precisely the question a court should be allowed to ask. Today, for anything inside the firefight, the law forbids the question itself.
Ask who is responsible for the Palisades Fire and watch the fingers move. Every party has someone else to point at — and because the law makes accountability optional, the circle never has to close.
A baby is drowning in a hotel pool. The lifeguard is right there on the sand — he saw the water, he knew the storm was coming. The baby drowns. The hotel says: blame the manager. The manager says: the front office set the staffing. The front office says: the owner cut the budget. The owner says: blame the storm.
Maybe the lifeguard froze. Maybe he was ordered off the sand. Maybe the order came from someone who never went near the water. A courtroom exists to find out which. Absolute immunity means we never do.
The Lifeguard — on why the finger-pointing never ends
Accountability starts at the local level. Not in Washington, not in an abstraction — in the fire commission that sets patrol standards, the city council that funds them, the county board that oversees mutual aid. The finger-pointing works because each pointer answers to no one. The Six Days Act closes the circle: when institutions know a court can ask the question, institutions start answering it before the fire — in their protocols, their staffing, and their patrols.
The Act
The Six Days Act does not sue firefighters personally, second-guess split-second judgment, or expose crews on the fire line. Good-faith decisions stay fully protected. It targets one thing: institutional gross negligence — the systemic, command-level failures that turn survivable incidents into catastrophes. It simply gives firefighting the same standard EMS has operated under since 1980.
"Neither a public entity, nor a public employee acting in the scope of his employment, is liable for any injury resulting from the condition of fire protection or firefighting equipment or facilities or… for any injury caused in fighting fires., except when the injury proximately results from bad faith or the gross negligence of the public entity in the management, supervision, or monitoring of fire suppression, including the declaration of extinguishment and post-suppression patrol of a fire scene."
The carve-out reaches command decisions and institutional systems — not the individual judgment of firefighters on a line. It mirrors the gross-negligence standard already governing every paramedic in the state.
The Fight
Statutes like §850.4 don't survive for sixty years by accident. They survive because powerful institutions defend them. You deserve to know the honest odds — and why we take them.
The Palisades litigation is in discovery now. Internal communications, dispatch logs, and patrol records are being pried loose. If the record shows they knew the scar was hot, the political price of defending absolute immunity flips overnight. Our public-records investigation exists to make sure that record sees daylight.
One lobby goes toe-to-toe with the fire lobby in Sacramento: the consumer attorneys. A gross-negligence carve-out is a cause their members can carry. Coalitions beat institutions only when they bring institutions of their own.
The grim truth of safety law: most reforms are named after the second tragedy, not the first. If another holdover reignites anywhere in the West — and without patrol standards, one will — this Act is the solution already drafted, already public, already waiting on the shelf.
If the Legislature won't move, roughly 546,000 signatures put the Six Days Act before the voters directly — beyond the reach of any lobby. The credible threat of that campaign is itself leverage in every Sacramento meeting.
Now
Own the record. The investigation, the film, the coalition, this campaign — making the six days impossible to forget or bury. This tier is already underway.
1–2 yrs
Force administrative reform. Statewide post-suppression patrol standards, a state audit, a legislative oversight hearing. These need no statute, save the next town, and build the on-ramp to the bill.
3–5 yrs
Pass the Act. A multi-year campaign whose odds rise with every discovery revelation, every coalition member, and every legislator who learns the EMS standard already works. Long fights are won by the side that doesn't leave.
No — and the text of the Act proves it. The carve-out targets public entities, not employees, and only for gross negligence in institutional functions: command decisions, monitoring protocols, extinguishment declarations. The firefighter on a hose line is exactly as protected after this Act as before it.
Firefighters were also victims of the institutional failures in January 2025 — sent into a catastrophe with dry hydrants and an empty reservoir. Accountability for the institutions that failed them is not an attack on them.
EMS has operated under a gross-negligence standard for over forty years without bankrupting a single California city. Gross negligence is a demanding bar — courts dismiss ordinary-negligence claims dressed up as gross negligence routinely.
The real fiscal question runs the other way: the Palisades Fire caused tens of billions in damage. A legal system that imposes zero consequences for preventable institutional failure guarantees those failures repeat — and taxpayers pay for the catastrophes either way.
This is the strongest objection, and the Act is drafted around it. Split-second tactical decisions during active suppression remain fully immune. The carve-out reaches only what happens in the calm: whether a fire is truly out before crews leave, whether a burn scar is patrolled during a red-flag wind forecast, whether command systems function. Those aren't heat-of-the-moment judgments — they're institutional obligations with time to get right.
Paramedics make faster, higher-stakes decisions than almost anyone, under a gross-negligence standard, every day. Hesitation has not been the result.
Some did — by threading a needle. Courts allowed claims to proceed only because the alleged failures occurred before active firefighting. If the same negligence had occurred mid-suppression, every case would have been dismissed at the threshold. Twelve deaths and 6,800 destroyed structures should not hinge on an accident of timing.
And that needle may still close: appeals continue, and nothing in current law prevents the next catastrophe from falling entirely inside the immunity window.
Because emergency response genuinely requires protected judgment. Ordinary negligence — a reasonable-care standard — would expose every tactical choice to hindsight litigation. Gross negligence means an extreme departure from what a reasonable agency would do: leaving a known burn scar unmonitored into a forecasted windstorm, for example. It protects judgment while ending impunity. It's also the standard California already chose for EMS, which makes the Act an alignment, not an experiment.
The Six Days Act is a campaign of The Overlooked Foundation, a 501(c)(3) founded by Jeremy Wineberg, a Pacific Palisades native who lost his family home of thirty years in the fire. The foundation produced The Land They Overlooked, the documentary record of the six days, and has pursued the public-records investigation into the January 1 Lachman Fire since early 2025.
Act Now
You can't vote on a statute directly — but you are the mechanism that changes it. Here is exactly how this becomes law, and where your pressure lands.
One Assembly member or State Senator introduces the amendment. That's what the petition and letters below are for — showing an author that a constituency is already waiting.
The bill moves through Judiciary and Local Government committees, floor votes in both houses, then the Governor's signature. Coalition testimony from fire-loss communities is what carries a bill like this through committee.
California voters can amend statutes directly by initiative: roughly 546,000 valid signatures puts the Six Days Act on a statewide ballot. Then the people do vote on it — literally. Sacramento knows this path exists, which is exactly why the demand starts loud.
No state bill is needed for the LA Fire Commission to adopt binding post-suppression patrol standards, or for the City Council to pass a resolution supporting the Act. Local bodies meet in public, take comment from anyone, and answer to voters directly. That's where accountability begins — this month, not next session.
Add your name to the demand that the Legislature pass the Six Days Act.
Launch note: connect to a petition platform (Action Network recommended for c3-compliant advocacy) before going live. Until then, this copies a signature message to send to petition@sixdaysact.org.
Pick who you are, and we'll draft the letter. Personalize it — edited letters carry far more weight than form letters. Find your Assembly member and State Senator at findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov.
This law will not change unless the communities it failed demand it — together. We are building a coalition of survivors, families, and community organizations from every California fire, with allies in every state where absolute immunity still stands.
For survivor groups, community organizations, HOAs, and fire-loss families joining as founding coalition members.
Launch note: wire this to Action Network, Airtable, or a simple form backend before going live. Until then, this copies a sign-on request to send to coalition@sixdaysact.org.
LA City Council and the Board of Fire Commissioners take public comment at every meeting. Two minutes at a microphone, on the record, asking for patrol standards and a resolution supporting the Six Days Act — that's how local accountability starts.
The Land They Overlooked — the 17-minute documentary record of the six days.
Tax-deductible donations to The Overlooked Foundation fund the investigation, the coalition, and this campaign's public education work.
Press Kit
They knew for six days. They did nothing. And the law says that's fine. We're changing the law.