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MY VIEWPOINT - Los Angeles has always been a city of reinvention. We rebuild freeways after earthquakes, neighborhoods after unrest, and livelihoods after economic shocks. But the recent fires confront us with a different kind of reconstruction—one that isn’t only about burned hillsides and damaged homes. It’s about civic trust.
An after-action report is supposed to be a public instrument: a mirror held up to institutions so we can learn what worked, what failed, and what must change. When that mirror is blurred—when drafts are revised in ways that appear to soften criticism, remove uncomfortable operational details, or recast “failures” as “challenges”—the damage extends beyond any single incident. It moves into the public bloodstream as doubt. And doubt, when it hardens into cynicism, becomes a gateway to something worse: the idea that no truth is possible, that all news is “fake,” that all institutions lie, and therefore nothing deserves our care or participation.
That slippery slope is not a theoretical concern. It is the oxygen that fuels our national culture of suspicion and spectacle. We do not have to name particular figures to recognize the pattern: loud voices who thrive on derision, who flatten complexity into slogans, who profit when citizens conclude that democratic self-government is a sham. The tragedy is that if Los Angeles handles its own accountability poorly, it hands those voices a gift.
At the same time, there is an honest tension here. If we criticize public servants too harshly—especially after dangerous, exhausting work—we risk unfairness. We risk demoralizing the very people we rely on. We risk turning necessary oversight into a sport of humiliation. And yes, we risk giving cynics more fuel.
So, what is the path forward? I suggest we take a cue from the wisdom of the ancient Athenians: democracy is not merely a set of elections. It is a discipline of public explanation. It is the habit of stating clearly what happened, why it happened, what will change, and who will be responsible for making that change real.
The concerns raised by recent reporting in the Los Angeles Times about the Los Angeles Fire Department’s after-action account can be held in that spirit. The central issue is not whether firefighters worked hard. They did. The issue is whether a public learning document remained fully candid as it moved through internal review. If earlier drafts more directly raised questions about preparedness, staffing, and decision-making—while later edits softened that language or removed certain specifics—then the city owes residents a straightforward explanation of why those changes were made and what standards guided them.
This isn’t an exercise in suspicion for its own sake. It is the opposite: it is how we prevent suspicion from metastasizing. When people sense that the story is being polished, they don’t become more charitable. They become more doubtful. And doubt spreads faster than facts.
A healthy city does not confuse reassurance with truth. Reassurance has its place after tragedy. But truth is how we improve. It is also how we honor the public. If an after-action report is meant to help us do better next time, then the process that produces it must be worthy of the public’s confidence. That means the city should treat clarity as a civic obligation, not a reputational choice.
We can do this without tearing down the people who put themselves in harm’s way. Accountability does not require contempt. It requires adult standards. A clear standard would sound like this: if substantial edits materially change the public meaning of a report—especially in areas connected to readiness, command, or safety—then those edits should be explainable in plain language. If the edits were corrections, show the corrections. If they were judgments about fairness or tone, say so and defend them. If the report is meant to be a learning tool rather than a legal brief, then the public should be able to see the learning.
Los Angeles as one city means we resist the temptation to turn crisis into faction. Fires do not ask your party registration. Smoke does not check your neighborhood boundaries. Our job is to insist on competence and honesty for everyone, while remembering that our institutions are made of human beings. If we speak as one city, we can be firm about transparency while remaining fair to the people who served.
This is also how we avoid feeding the cynics. The cynics want only two options: either blind loyalty to institutions, or total scorn for them. Los Angeles should choose a third option: respectful candor. That approach disarms the culture-war instinct because it refuses the extremes. It does not pretend everything went perfectly, and it does not treat every flaw as proof of corruption. It treats flaws as information and improvement as the point.
There is a practical opportunity here. The city can strengthen public confidence in future emergency reporting by making the process more visible. That does not mean dumping raw drafts into public view like entertainment. It means establishing predictable norms. For example, when a report is finalized, the city could publish a brief “process statement” that explains who reviewed it, what categories of changes were made, and how disagreements were resolved. It could also publish a clear implementation tracker for recommendations—what has been adopted, what is pending, who owns each item, and by when residents should expect progress updates. Most people do not need every operational detail; they need evidence that the system learns in daylight.
And we should say the positive part out loud. Fires are brutal teachers. But they do teach. They teach us about communications, pre-deployment, mutual aid, command clarity, and how quickly conditions outpace plans. They also teach us something cultural: in the age of instant outrage and instant misinformation, the way we explain ourselves matters almost as much as what we do. If Los Angeles becomes known as a city that tells the truth about its own performance—without self-flagellation, without spin—then it becomes harder for outside demagogues to caricature us, and easier for residents to invest their loyalty in local institutions.
Los Angeles can lead, not by claiming perfection, but by modeling democratic seriousness. We can protect the morale of our firefighters and staff while insisting that the public record be fully trustworthy. We can honor the pain of those who lost homes and stability by refusing to let learning documents become image documents. If we do that, we rebuild more than structures. We rebuild the civic confidence that will carry us through whatever comes next.
Plato wrote "You should not honor men more than truth".
(Nick Patsaouras is a Los Angeles-based electrical engineer and civic leader whose firm has shaped projects across commercial, medical, and entertainment sectors. A longtime public advocate, he ran for Mayor in 1993 with a focus on rebuilding L.A. through transportation. He has served on major public boards, including the Department of Water and Power, Metro, and the Board of Zoning Appeals, helping guide infrastructure and planning policy in Los Angeles.)
