A man who fled California for Florida has been charged with maliciously starting what eventually became known as the Palisades Fire, one of the most destructive wildfires in Los Angeles history, according to the Department of Justice.
Jonathan Rinderknecht, of Melbourne, Florida, was arrested Tuesday and charged with destruction of property by means of fire, according to the Department of Justice.
Insured losses from the devastating Palisades Fire alone are projected to range between $20 billion and $25 billion, according to a January report from Verisk’s Extreme Event Solutions group, a leading global provider of data analytics and technology for the insurance industry.
WHO IS JONATHAN RINDERKNECHT, PALISADES FIRE SUSPECT ACCUSED OF SPARKING DEADLY BLAZE?
In total, there were more than a dozen fires spanning multiple counties, but the Palisades and Eaton fires were the largest.
The UCLA Anderson Forecast projected in February that the Palisades and Eaton fires may have caused total property and capital losses ranging between $95 billion and $164 billion, with insured losses estimated at $75 billion.
CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES: INSURED LOSSES COULD TOP $30B, WELLS FARGO ANALYSIS FINDS
Meanwhile, financial analysts at Wells Fargo Securities released a report in January, noting that their “base case” for insured losses due to all the wildfires was $30 billion, adding that the total losses could fall in a range between $20 billion and $40 billion.
Within that total, about 85% of losses are expected to come from homeowners’ insurance policies, while 13.5% are commercial property and 1.5% are personal auto losses, the Wells Fargo analysis found. The base case noted that average property values range around $3 million in areas affected by the wildfires.
Officials determined that the Palisades Fire was a “holdover” fire, which means it was a continuation of the Lachman Fire that began early in the morning on New Year’s Day 2025, according to an affidavit filed with the federal criminal complaint.
The Justice Department said that while the Lachman Fire was quickly suppressed, unbeknownst to anyone, it continued to “smolder and burn underground within the root structure of dense vegetation.”
ARREST MADE IN CONNECTION TO DEADLY PACIFIC PALISADES FIRE, SOURCES SAY
On Jan, 7, heavy winds caused the underground fire to surface and spread above ground, causing widespread damage in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Law enforcement determined – using witness statements, video surveillance, cellphone data and analysis of fire dynamics and patterns at the scene, among other things – that
The Justice Department said that Rinderknecht “maliciously set the Lachman Fire” after midnight New Year’s Day on land owned by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA), an organization that received federal funding. A week later that same fire burned federal property, the Justice Department said.
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