Did the Los Angeles Fire Department ask "anyone with firefighting experience" to assist in fighting wildfires in the area on January 7, 2025? No, that's not true: The department said it is "NOT requesting assistance from the public" in a statement on X. On January 7, 2025, it issued a recall for active off-duty department members, with the agency later saying the recall alert had been "misconstrued."
The claim appeared in a post shared to X on January 7, 2025 (archived here) that included a video of fires burning through a suburban neighborhood. A caption read:
🚨 COUNTLESS homes in Southern California have been completely burned down now, per
@MattSeedorff
LAFD are BEGGING anyone with firefighting experience to call 213-576-8963 to assist them, as they're running out of resources
Practically unheard of.
This is how the post looked on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken Wed Jan 8 08:51:24 2025 UTC)
The Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) had not requested help from the general public as of January 8, 2025.
On the evening of January 7, 2025, the department posted an announcement (archived here) to X that read:
All #LAFD members currently off-duty are to call the DOC 213-576-8962 with their availability for recall. #palisadesfire
Below is a live embed of that post:
All #LAFD members currently off-duty are to call the DOC 213-576-8962 with their availability for recall. #palisadesfire
-- LAFD 🔥 (@LAFD) January 8, 2025
Nearly two hours later the same day, the department clarified in another post (archived here) on X that it was not asking for public help, writing:
The LAFD is NOT requesting assistance from the public. The message was misconstrued. We are running a recall for our OWN LAFD members ONLY. Thank you.
A live embed of that post is shown below:
The LAFD is NOT requesting assistance from the public. The message was misconstrued. We are running a recall for our OWN LAFD members ONLY. Thank you.
-- #LAFD Talk 💬 (@LAFDtalk) January 8, 2025
On January 7. 2025, the greater Los Angeles area saw critical fire weather conditions (archived here) that spurred multiple wildfires burning thousands of acres as of this writing, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (archived here).
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Other Lead Stories fact checks involving wildfires can be read here.
