Los Angeles has long been characterized by stark divisions between its run-down neighborhoods and tent cities juxtaposed with rows of luxurious mansions.
Amidst the current devastating wildfires engulfing the city, a new financial gap has emerged: those who can afford private firefighters to protect their homes and those who cannot. This divide underscores the contrasting fates of properties being saved by hired help while others are being ravaged by the flames.
Typically engaged by local governments and insurance firms, these private firefighting services are now being directly contacted by affluent homeowners in Los Angeles, showcasing the extent of desperation among the wealthy to safeguard their properties.
And, apparently, paying wildly over the odds. A typical two-person private firefighting crew with a small vehicle can cost $3,000 a day, with a much larger 20-man team running to $10,000 a day.
Chris Dunn, owner of private firefighting firm Covered 6, told the Mail his phone had been ‘ringing off the hook’ with pleas for help.
With some distraught millionaires promising to ‘pay any amount’ to save their homes, it’s been claimed that some firms are now able to charge as much as much as $2,000 (£1,650) an hour.
Clients who can afford that sort of rate tend to have huge swimming pools, which is fortunate because – with the fire hydrants serving the city out of water – they can suck what they need from their pools.
Nobody has complained about LA’s overwhelmed political leaders calling in fire-fighting help from across the US, Canada and Mexico. But private firefighters are a rather different matter.
Chris Dunn (pictured), owner of private firefighting firm Covered 6, told the Mail his phone had been ‘ringing off the hook’ with pleas for help
A fire fighting helicopter drops water as the Palisades fire grows
Americans have long tolerated many consequences of wild income inequality, but when it comes down to the possibility that the rich are saving their mansions at the expense of others, their patience has finally snapped.
Like private schools and healthcare companies, such firefighting firms claim they help everyone by supplementing over-stretched government resources.
They also stress that they don’t only protect the rich, as 90 per cent of the homes covered by their insurance company clients are usually of average value. (The situation looks different in LA, they add, because so many homes are multi-million dollar ones.)
Critics counter that these outfits are actually a hindrance rather than a help – competing for precious resources including water and getting in the way of other firefighters.
And while private firefighting bosses insist they bring their own water or take it from clients’ swimming pools rather than hooking up to street hydrants, critics question how they manage when those two sources inevitably run out during LA’s sustained wildfires.
Some private firefighting companies have conceded that they will, if necessary, use hydrants or other sources of water, such as lakes and ponds, on which government firefighters will also rely.
These companies first came to the attention of the general public in the US in 2018 when one helped save rapper Kanye West and his then wife Kim Kardashian’s £50million mansion in the gated LA community of Hidden Hills from that year’s Woolsey wildfire.
Some neighbours praised the couple as they said the intervention, which involved digging a string of trenches to create a fire break, saved their own homes, too.
The weather is expected to contribute to another stint of dangerous and potentially extreme fire conditions which could exacerbate the fires already burning and cause more new ones to pop up
Dozens of people are unaccounted for as evacuees locked out of their suburbs face an anxious wait to return home and see what – if anything – remains
Homes along Pacific Coast Highway are seen burned and damaged while a few still stand
But opinions have hardened considerably against the super-rich and their firemen-for-hire as the devastation in LA has continued.
Indeed, damning photos have shown streets reduced to ash and rubble with the exception of a favoured few – sometimes with a small team of private firefighters parked watchfully outside as the rest of the street smoulders.
LA was once a city famous for fawning on the rich and famous who live there, but Hollywood celebrities are losing their lustre. Some blame the pandemic, when so many of them appeared tone deaf as they posted smug social media videos from their luxurious mansions.
As a result, those moneyed locals who have publicly admitted using private firefighters, or tried to recruit them, have had to contend with the fury of their fellow citizens, many of whom have expressed outrage at the mere notion that there could even be a two-tier system when it comes to putting out fires.
Keith Wasserman, a millionaire property investor who had previously boasted online about how he avoids paying taxes, was engulfed in his own personal firestorm on social media after posting on X: ‘Does anyone have access to private firefighters to protect our home in Pacific Palisades? Need to act fast here. All neighbours’ houses burning. Will pay any amount. Thank you.’
One online critic lambasted Wasserman’s ‘incredible nerve’, commenting: ‘His family is evacuated and he’s trying to hire private firefighters to risk their lives to save a home he most certainly has insured. Incredibly tone deaf.’
Another said: ‘I swear I never know certain things even exist till rich people are in a jam. Private firefighters?? That’s a real thing??.’ Wasserman has since removed his profile from the website.
Adam Leber, a Hollywood agent whose clients have included singers Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears, ran into the same trouble when he admitted his house was being protected by a private firefighting company, All Risk Shield, on a $6,000 annual retainer after a fire last year.
The Palisades Fire reached over 23,000 acres by Sunday night
An American flag is seen tattered as it flies above a burned down home after the Palisades Fire
They rushed in to save his mansion in the Hollywood Hills as he left the 6,000 sq ft house with his wife and three-year-old daughter and headed for their second home in another part of California.
‘The rich suffer zero consequences of anything, even cataclysmic natural disasters,’ complained an X user. ‘Private and firefighter should not be in the same sentence.’
Leber rallied to his own defence, telling the New York Times: ‘I did what any human being on earth would do…I was 1,000 per cent certain my house was done and the neighborhood was done.’
He went on: ‘The team brought in their own water and then pulled water from his swimming pool. They did not tap into the fire hydrants. That’s a huge misconception.’
However, firefighting union leaders – who have long had a rocky relationship with private companies whose workforce are often not in a union – beg to differ.
Brian Rice, president of California Professional Firefighters, which represents 35,000 members, said this week such outfits were a ‘liability’ rather than an asset, principally because they are trained to fight fires in deep forests rather than cities.
‘The private contract companies are not trained or equipped to operate in this environment,’ he said.
Following claims that private firefighters weren’t even bothering to coordinate with emergency services, California passed regulations in 2018 which banned them using emergency lights or sirens, or kitting out their vehicles to look like official fire engines.
A woman sits as she sifts through the rubble of her mother’s home after it was destroyed by the Palisades Fire
An air tanker drops Phos-Chek flame retardant in Mandeville Canyon during the Palisades Fire
That hasn’t deterred Hollywood’s ‘one-per centers’. Rick Caruso, a billionaire property developer who owns Palisades Village, a glitzy shopping mall full of luxury brand stores, such as Chanel, as well as an expensive sushi restaurant, called in several firefighting firms from the neighbouring state of Arizona last week as the flames spread to the development.
Caruso said the local hydrants had run out, so his lorries – each with hundreds of gallons – saved the day. ‘Our property is standing. Everything around us is gone. It is like a war zone,’ Caruso noted bluntly.
Although many of them are involved principally in installing fire-prevention measures such as sprinkler systems rather than physically fighting blazes, private firefighters now account for some 45 per cent of all firemen in the US, working in more than 300 firms.
Employers typically require firefighting certificates and prefer recruits who’ve already worked in public fire departments. Some of them say they can earn nearly £40,000 working for just a few months a year during peak wildfire season.
Fury towards these companies is certainly raising the temperature even higher in scorched LA. But some question whether it’s realistic to expect anyone, faced with the almost certain destruction of their family home, to do any different – selfish capitalists or not.
