LA Fire Chief terminated by Mayor Bass

The hammer has finally fallen as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass tries to save her job.

Bass fired LA Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, pointing the finger at her for slow initial responses that allowed the wildfires to rage out of control.

You Were Warned

Crowley reportedly warned Bass before the season started that the cuts to the budget would make mass responses difficult to manage.

Bass had cut $7 million from the overtime budget of the department, with Crowley objecting, stating the cuts "severely limited the Department's capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies.”

She also noted that the cuts would impact the ability of the department to conduct brush clearance inspections.

Bass responded, "There were no reductions that were made that would have impacted the situation that we were dealing with over the last couple of days.”

Bass Taking Heat

Bass, who vowed not to travel internationally if elected mayor, was in Ghana at the time the wildfires started.

Even though the National Weather Service had issued several warnings prior to Bass departing for her trip, she claimed the notifications never made it to her.

Ariel Cohen, an NWS meteorologist pushed back, stating, “This is an event that had exceptionally long lead times, not only of the powerful windstorm that we anticipated but also the potential for a particularly dangerous situation, red flag warning, fire weather conditions.”

My opinion… Bass didn’t care. She was going to go on her trip regardless of what was coming because she loved those international headlines, and even though she was now mayor, she still seemed to think she was on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

You Are Fired

If Bass is going to save her job come next election, she needed someone to take the fall, and Crowley was the one that was thrown under the bus.

Bass, in announcing Crowley’s dismissal, stated, “We know that 1,000 firefighters that could have been on duty on the morning the fires broke out were instead sent home on Chief Crowley’s watch.

“Furthermore, a necessary step to an investigation was the President of the Fire Commission telling Chief Crowley to do an after action report on the fires. The Chief refused. These require her removal.”

Crowley clearly had some blame here, plenty of it, but this also falls on Bass, as well as the city for never fixing the fire hydrant system, which made it virtually impossible to put out the fires. If the people of LA re-elect her, they get everything the deserve.