Spencer Pratt had settled into his post-reality TV life with his wife, Heidi Montag, and their two young boys in Pacific Palisades, the same neighborhood where he grew up and where his parents still lived. The former MTV reality show "villain"—turned husband and father slid into a chill, post-TV life of buying and selling crystals, making videos about his collection of hummingbirds, popping off on TikTok and Instagram as an influencer, and hyping his talented wife's dance music.
Then, last January, everything burned up. Gone were his childhood home and his children's childhood home, as well as their preschool, park, and village.
It didn't take long for the second-generation, live-and-let-live Palisades boy to realize that the City of Los Angeles, the State of California, and every agency in between had done next to nothing to protect his neighborhood. But once the fire broke out, he tried to save what was left of his neighborhood.
At first he was stunned and just trying to help his parents and family get through the trauma.
Then Pratt started asking questions. He got mad. And now he's gotten dangerously tactical. From FireAid, to EPA cleanup, to L.A. Mayor Karen Bass's ineptitude and Gov. Gavin Newsom's monstrously broken promises, Pratt has helped expose it all.
He's been a vocal critic of how the money from the $100 million FireAid fund was spent, which I told you about in "Sorry, L.A. Fire Victims, the NGO Borg Ate Your FireAid Money."
And he's not done.
Pratt secured the promises of Florida Senator Rick Scott—not his own California delegation—for a briefing from the investigating agency—the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—about the cause of the fire. He heads to Washington, D.C., next week in a quest for answers.
Pratt has highlighted the lack of brush clearing by the state. He's sued the city. He's gone into a deep dive about why the reservoir was dry during the fire, discovering that the reservoir was installed for fire abatement while the city and Los Angeles Department of Water and Power now maintain that it was meant for drinking water.
This is a key issue because the drinking water issue is why a tear in the reservoir tarp cover resulted in the reservoir being drained for more than a year before the fire. I told you about some of these issues in "Stunner: Why Was Pacific Palisades Reservoir EMPTY?"
Pratt has issued a public records request for the 911 calls to CalFire and local LAFD. He says he was told that those records are unavailable. When he and his wife called on January 7 and the next day they were told no one was available to help.
He later found out that the city can decide the level of fire protection given to certain areas; it was minimal for Pacific Palisades. Pratt said he'd like to pay taxes at that reduced level and use the remainder to do what developer Rick Caruso did: park private water tenders outside his buildings in the Palisades. Caruso's commercial properties in the Palisades survived because of his preparation.
Pratt talked about it with his wife, Heidi, on a recent episode of their podcast, "The Fame Game":
Heidi: The cops are not coming. The firemen are not coming. My house is going to burn down. I literally was crying. And I told Spencer to call 911. Just call. Just fricking call, so we always know in our hearts that we called. And they told him, 'Sorry, nobody's coming.' Nobody's coming? Look, there's not even a siren going off in town.
Spencer: No, they said they had no assets available. But Gavin Newsom said he'd pre-deployed 110 assets. It's interesting those imaginary assets couldn't be on the street. I asked for that 911 call and CalFire [said] all those files have been deleted.
Spencer could save some time if he just read my story about the reservoirs, hydrology, lack of forest thinning, brush removal, fire breaks, and dam removal in California.
Pratt's working all the marketing angles to rebuild his house. He's written a book, "The Guy You Loved to Hate: Confessions of a Reality TV Villain," and continues to tout his wife's music as a way to pay their mortgage, taxes, and other costs for a house that doesn't exist anymore.
For years, Pratt was a villain on The Hills, but now an entirely new swath of fans are cheering on this Paul Revere's activism and calling him a hero.
That's quite a redemption story.
