The private firefighters that the rich in Los Angeles hire to save their properties from fires (and the criticism that this generates)

“So you’re suggesting that potentially vital (even ‘private’) resources be diverted to save your house because you’re rich while tens of thousands of people are trying to evacuate?” questioned a user identified as Renny.

“The nerve is incredible… His family is evacuated and he tries to hire private firefighters to risk their lives to save a house that is probably insured,” wrote Sam Vance in another response to Wasserman’s message, who after criticism deactivated your account.

However, what Wasserman was requesting is a private fire response service known for several years in Los Angeles and other parts vulnerable to this type of emergency in the United States.

In fact, in that same city in 2018 another controversy arose after Kim Kardashian and her then-husband, Kanye West, hired a private fire service to protect their home in Calabasas from a forest fire.

Kardashian then defended herself against the criticism, pointing out that the out-of-pocket hire not only saved her $50 million mansion, but helped her neighbors.

Specialists point out that private hiring of firefighters is more unusual than the current emergency makes it seem.

The firms regularly serve businesses, insurance companies and, in the least cases, small clients.

This is confirmed by Deborah Miley, director of the National Wildland Fire Fighting Association, which represents more than 300 private firefighting firms.

Miley explained to the newspaper The New York Times that almost half (42%) of the firefighters in the United States are hired by this type of company.

Joe Torres, from the private services company All-Risk Shield, explains to BBC Mundo that this is his case.

“It’s usually an annual subscription. We do a lot of property preparation work long before any fire hits,” he explains.

Although the law prohibits these companies from interfering with emergency operations, there are some that can offer their resources on their own.

The firms, of various sizes, have tankers of different capacities, as well as fire crews and experts in protecting buildings against fires, forestry or other types.

Regularly retired firefighters join the ranks of these companies. They use their own resources, including water, since they are prohibited from connecting to public service hydrants.

In California, a law to regulate these services that emerged in 2018 – after the Kardashian and West controversy – even prohibits these services from having vehicles that look like red emergency vehicles, or that interfere with public operations.

In the current emergency in Los Angeles, some private firefighters have been seen guarding residences in wealthy neighborhoods.

According to reports, prices vary: from those who offer their services for US$2,000 per hour, to those who guard a property for between US$10,000 and US$14,000 per day.

Emma Vardy, a BBC reporter sent to cover the California emergency, found tankers from private companies doing preventive surveillance in the Brentwood neighborhood. “These can only be paid for by the very, very rich,” Vardy said.

“There is a small army ready to protect these homes of very, very rich people. People have questioned how ethical this is while there are schools and homes of ordinary people that have been destroyed. And with public fire services in crisis,” he reported from that neighborhood, which still did not have an imminent threat of fire.

But the current emergency has put many in the city in a difficult situation. More than 12,000 structures – including homes and businesses – have been consumed by the fire that has devastated some 16,000 hectares, between natural areas and neighborhoods such as Palisades, Eaton or Altadena.

Unlike Wasserman, other businessmen have managed to save their properties. The case of real estate developer Rick Caruso has been cited in various media, as he hired a service that traveled from the neighboring states of Arizona and Oregon to protect his residence and a small shopping center in Pacific Palisades.

BBC Mundo requested comments from the Los Angeles authorities about the private fire operation, but at the time of publication of this article it had not received a response.

David Acuña, one of the spokespersons for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, explained to CBS News, a BBC partner in the US, that private firefighters do not respond to emergencies in general.

“We do not want nor are we going to delegate to private firefighters the operations that we have to carry out with complex coordination,” he said.

When hired, employees of these private companies prepare property in an area vulnerable to wildfires with controls on the ground: clearing vegetation or flammable materials that cause flames to reach structures.

They can also protect vulnerable points by installing fire-fighting materials or coatings, such as windows, doors or walls.

Some insurance companies offer this type of services to their clients. And the policies may include the deployment of emergency services like those seen these days in Los Angeles.

“We do a lot of preparation. So we try to get our clients involved from the beginning. And if something happens, we send an alert. We have patrols that go out and that are in the area and we go and prepare the property and then we leave,” says Joe Torres .

When asked if authorities can ask them to make their resources available to public emergency services, Torres explains that companies like All-Risk Shield “have no obligation,” but they have been able to do so.

“My teams will help if required or necessary; absolutely in something like this, where everyone is needed. Everything has been overloaded during this event and the resources we had available were out there and were able to help,” he says.

“They have been able to take charge of properties, which freed or reduced the burden on local authorities or the first teams to arrive,” he says.

However, the decision to offer help or not in this emergency that has been classified as one of the largest disasters in the history of Los Angeles was at the discretion of each company.

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