A sign appeared on a float in the iconic Rose Bowl parade New Year’s Day demanding an investigation into the Eaton fire, which burned 9,000 homes and killed 19 in the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena almost a year ago.
The sign was displayed on a float created to honor those affected by all the January 2025 wildfires in the Los Angeles area that leveled some 17,000 homes and buildings and may have resulted in as many as 400 fire-related deaths, according to one study.
The protest banner called for California Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate the Altadena fire, which devastated the the largely working-class community. But it didn’t last long once it reached the parade’s television feed.
As the float passed TV cameras, an unidentified man in rain gear chased down the float, grabbed the sign, and crumpled it up.
The point, however, was made as the approaching one-year anniversary has brought the 2025 wildfires front and center for the many Southern Californians impacted by the fires.
“Oh, they can tear down the sign and crumple it up but the internet is forever,” one observer commented on X.
The January 2025 wildfires have resulted in massive lawsuits, allegations of negligence and incompetence by officials, and accusations this week that fire authorities covered up their mistakes.
Called “Rising Together,” the float featured a phoenix and was created to honor the people killed by all three blazes and the “resilience, courage and unity of wildfire survivors from Altadena, Malibu, Pacific Palisades and Pasadena,” SF Gate reported.
According SF Gate:
In a joint statement sent via text the California Community Foundation and the Black Freedom Fund, which sponsored the float, clarified the “signage displayed was not part of float.” However, the groups said they stand with “the urgency of calls for accountability and justice.”
“Rising Together was created to honor the courage and resilience of wildfire survivors and to remember those whose lives were forever changed — and those we lost,” the groups said of the float. “We remain committed to justice for survivors and to walking alongside the community as it recovers, rebuilds and heals.”
The official cause of the Eaton Fire in Altadena has not been made public, although a power line is suspected, according to the online outlet.
On New Year’s Eve the Los Angeles Times published a bombshell investigative report on the fire that essentially wiped out the Pacific Palisades – a village known as “Mayberry by the Sea” and home to an economically diverse population of movie stars, retirees and middle-class families.
It is believed that blaze started as the result of a previous fire set by an arsonist a week earlier that was left to smolder by the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) only to be reignited by high winds on January 7.
The newspaper reported “LAFD leaders engaged in a campaign of secrecy” to avoid “taking full responsibility” for mistakes, particularly in an “after action report” that purported to investigate the fire.
Neglected in the after action report was the revelation that fire crews were ordered to leave the still-smoldering scar of the arson fire.
The Times report also criticized fire officials and Mayor Karen Bass, who was visiting Africa when the fire started, for failing to answer questions as to lack of crews and equipment and why engines were not deployed ahead of the high wind event – as was the previous practice.
The wind event had been forecasted for several days prior to the fires.
“I don’t think they’ve acknowledged that they’ve made mistakes yet, and that’s really a problem,” Sue Pascoe, editor of the local publication Circling the News, told the Times. She lost her home of 30 years. “They’re still trying to cover up … It’s not the regular firefighters. It’s coming from higher up.”
Additionally, as Breitbart News reported in several stories in 2025, City Hall may have been left without a central command when the Palisades fire hit.
Not only was Mayor Bass in Africa — Deputy Mayor Brian K. Williams, whose job was to oversee the city’s fire and police departments, was off the job. Weeks earlier he’d been suspended for calling in a phony bomb threat to get out of attending a Zoom meeting in October.
Williams pleaded guilty in late 2025 to faking the anti-Israel bomb threat in federal court, his lawyer claiming he was suffering “undiagnosed mental health challenges” at the time of the bomb ruse.
Williams could have faced ten years in prison. Instead, he was sentenced only to a year’s probation and a $5000 fine.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more. His residence was destroyed in the Palisades fire.