We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

The Palisades Village, a mall developed by Rick Caruso, is one of the only commercial structures still standing in the center of fire-torn Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles — and the mall appears to have sustained only minor damage.

According to Fox News, Caruso used a private firefighting service to fight the fire at the mall, and was able to save it. Caruso understood fire risks, having served decades earlier as Commissioner for the L.A. Department of Water and Power. And he also understood the limitations of the city’s public fire services, whose budget was cut nearly $20 million last year by Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council.

Caruso ran for mayor of L.A. in 2022, losing narrowly to Bass. He had argued that the city needed a political outsider with business experience to address problems like homelessness and crime.

LOS ANGELES, CA - MARCH 22, 2022 - - Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer, right, responds to a pointed accusation made by businessman Rick Caruso as U.S. Rep. Karen Bass observes during the mayoral debate at Bovard Auditorium on the USC campus on March 22, 2022. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

LOS ANGELES, CA – MARCH 22, 2022 – – Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer, right, responds to a pointed accusation made by businessman Rick Caruso as U.S. Rep. Karen Bass observes during the mayoral debate at Bovard Auditorium on the USC campus on March 22, 2022. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Bass ran on Democrats’ fury over the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, arguing that she was the only true “pro-choice Democrat” in the race, given that Caruso is a former Republican and that he had donated to pro-life candidates.

In the smoking rubble of Pacific Palisades, what Caruso protected has survived, and what Bass was supposed to protect has not.

Palisades was one of the areas of L.A. that voted for Caruso, amid growing concerns that the city was not doing enough about homelessness, and that it had even considered a “temporary” homeless shelter at the beach parking lot nearby.

Ironically, talk about the homeless shelter ended when vagrants set a series of fires in the mountains around Palisades. The beach parking lot was used as a staging area for police and firefighters battling those blazes.

Locals reported this week that Caruso’s employees had been hosing down his mall — as did employees at the private Bay Club, another structure that survived, though the grounds around it on the hillside near the ocean were burned.

Caruso told Fox News on Tuesday that the negligence of government officials — particularly in preparing for high winds, storing enough water, and clearing brush near homes — had exacerbated the damage from the Palisades fire.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.