Metropolis
Private Firefighters Are Not the Problem
They won’t save California. But don’t blame people for using them.
ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images
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As flames raced toward Keith Wasserman’s luxury home in Pacific Palisades, he did what any other wealthy executive might do: take to X to solicit recommendations for a good private firefighter.
“Need to act fast here,” he wrote. “All neighbors houses burning. Will pay any amount. Thank you.”
The backlash, perhaps unsurprisingly, given current attitudes toward members of the C-suite, was swift.
“A tone-deaf, public display or ‘rich privilege’ in a time of community crisis, is a curious choice, but OK,” wrote one user. “I swear I never know certain things even exist till rich people are in a jam. Private firefighters?? That’s a real thing??” asked another.
Indeed, it’s a thing. As the deadly blazes began erupting across Los Angeles County earlier this week, a private firefighting team rushed to defend the Hollywood Hills mansion of a talent manager whose clients have included Miley Cyrus and Lil Nas X, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. In fact, private firefighting, in one form or another, has been around for decades. In the U.S., public agencies across the country have long contracted with private crews to help battle wildfires.
A more recent development, however, is that some private firefighting crews have also started contracting directly with affluent homeowners, which at one time may or may not have included Kim and Kanye. But fire officials say these crews sometimes get in the way of first responders and hinder evacuation efforts. In 2021, authorities even detained a team of private firefighters hired to project a Napa Valley vineyard during one of Wine Country’s recent destructive blazes. Still, the kind of private firefighting Wasserman sought remains a niche business, with clients often relying on word-of-mouth among those in the know.
It’s not hard to understand the outrage directed at Wasserman. A managing partner at a real estate investment firm willing to “pay any amount” to save his home, which is in the same neighborhood as Ben Affleck’s $20 million “bachelor pad,” he’s the perfect embodiment of the increasingly dystopian inequality inherent to California.
But at the same time, can you really blame him? Who wouldn’t want to pay to protect their family home from almost-certain destruction, if they had the means?
Private firefighters, and those who hire them, will tell you the industry provides a much-needed service as understaffed public fire crews struggle to keep up with more frequent, catastrophic infernos stoked by a warming climate. And they may have a point. According to ProPublica, the National Forest Service’s entire California wildland firefighting force had a 35 percent vacancy rate in 2023, in part because of the low pay for these government jobs.