By Nathan Solis
Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES — Cleanup crews on the site of the Palisades fire have found roughly 500 firearms in the debris of homes that burned earlier this year and the Los Angeles Police Department is now working to reunite the weapons with their owners.
Most of the charred handguns and rifles found in the ash appear damaged, with the stocks burned away and the metal baked to a copper color, according to photos shared by the LAPD on Wednesday. The guns are difficult to identify due to the fire damage, police said, but the LAPD’s Gun Recovery Unit wants to give their owners the chance to claim them.
LAPD officials did not say how many — if any — of the recovered firearms are still functional but authorities made clear that they also want to have a record of which guns are destroyed or returned to their rightful owners and how many are still unaccounted for. The data collected will be entered into the state’s Automated Firearms System, according to police.
Driven by strong winds, the Palisades fire burned for 24 days, killed 12 people and destroyed over 6,800 structures. The cause of the fire remains under investigation. In recent months, cleanup crews have removed debris from the burn scars, discovered the firearms and have turned them over to police.
“Since January, LAPD officers have been working through the painstaking process of recovering and rendering approximately 500 firearms safe,” LAPD Chief of Detectives Alan Hamilton said in a statement.
“We recognize that these firearms may hold significant sentimental value to their owners, whether as family heirlooms, historical pieces or personal mementos, and we are doing our best to reunite them with their owners.”
Gun owners can contact the LAPD with their home address and the description of the firearm to begin the recovery process. They can either report the firearm as “lost property” to any LAPD police station, online or via email.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has not released any information about firearms recovered from the Eaton fire zone.
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