Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass sacked the city’s fire chief on Friday, blaming her for leadership failures in the handling of deadly blazes that tore through the California metropolis in January.
The axing of Kristin Crowley comes six weeks after America’s second most populous city was ravaged by fires that left at least 29 people dead and vast areas in ruins.
It also comes as angry residents continue to look for someone to blame for the fires.
“Acting in the best interest of Los Angeles public safety and for the operations of the Los Angeles Fire Department, I just met with Chief Crowley and removed her as fire chief,” Bass told reporters.
The mayor said she has called for a full investigation of “everything” leading up to January 7 when the fires began.
“A necessary step to the investigation was the president of the fire commission telling Chief Crowley to do an after-action report on the fires. The fire chief refused,” Bass said.
“We all know that 1,000 firefighters that could have been on duty on the morning the fires broke were instead sent home on Chief Crowley’s watch. These actions required her removal.”
Tensions had flared between the two officials even as flames raged in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods.
There was sharp criticism over the firefight, particularly in the tony Pacific Palisades area, where hydrants ran dry because of huge demands on the system.
Just days after the wind-driven fires broke out, Crowley blindsided city bosses by telling a local television interviewer that Los Angeles had failed her department, which she described as understaffed and underfunded.
“My message is the fire department needs to be properly funded,” Crowley told the local Fox television channel. “It’s not.”
An appearance on national TV compounded the rift when she told CNN that budget cuts had directly affected her ability to fight the mammoth fires.
Hours later, Bass hauled Crowley in for a closed-door meeting that ran so late Bass missed a scheduled news briefing.
The next time the two stood together at a press conference, tensions were evident, despite pledges that they were on the same page.
– Foreign trip –
Bass’s move Friday comes after weeks of criticism levelled at her.
The former US congresswoman has frequently been the target of residents’ ire in recent weeks after a flat-footed response to the fires, which broke out while she was in Ghana.
Ahead of the January 7 outbreaks, the National Weather Service had been warning that fierce winds and exceedingly dry weather would leave the Los Angeles region at very high risk of a fire.
State and local officials announced they were pre-positioning resources to pounce and try to keep a handle on any blazes that they expected would spread rapidly in 100-mile (160-kilometer)-per-hour winds.
Local and national media extensively carried warnings of the elevated danger.
But at a press conference Friday, Bass framed her decision to press ahead with her foreign trip as the result of Crowley’s failure to warn her of the risk.
“What has happened in the two-plus years I’ve been here every time there was a weather emergency, or even a hint of a weather emergency, the chief has called me directly,” Bass told reporters.
“She has my cell phone. She knows she can call me 24/7, and she briefed me, and then we would talk about what needed to happen next. That did not happen this time.”
AFP
