The Los Angeles City Council is meeting Tuesday for the first time since Mayor Karen Bass removed Kristin Crowley as Chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department.
Scheduled for the meeting is a motion pushing to re-employ retired city workers to help with recovery and rebuilding efforts. This all comes as controversy continues to swirl over the mayor’s decision.
City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said he was acting mayor when the fires started because Bass was in Ghana. He told City News Service he encouraged the mayor to “separate” from the now-former chief weeks ago.
“I was not getting a flow of information from the chief during that time period. I did not talk to her until I showed up to a press conference at four o’clock that afternoon of the fire,” he told the outlet.
KTLA’s Annie Rose Ramos attempted to ask Harris-Dawson about his comments as he walked into council chambers ahead of the meeting but told her he was “late for council” and denied answering her questions, closing the door to the chambers.
Bass received widespread criticism for traveling to Ghana on an ambassadorial trip before the outbreak of the deadly wildfires in the Palisades and San Gabriel Valley in January. Last week she removed Crowley from her post, accusing her of not properly alerting her with weather updates before she left town.
“What everyone needs to remember is that Mayor Bass was in Ghana. So (Crowley) would not be communicating with the mayor,” Councilmember Monica Rodriguez explained to KTLA.
In the event of a disaster, Crowley would be in communication with the acting mayor, which was Harris-Dawson.
Bass also claims Crowley refused to comply with her request of completing an after action report.
Councilmember Nithya Raman told KTLA she was looking forward to getting that report to see how prepared the region was for those widespread fires.
“We knew those winds were coming,” she said. “Were our trucks deployed appropriately? Was enough staff kept on in preparation for those fires? Those are all questions that are really important for us to be able to ask, not just to assess our response to this one but to make sure we’re never in that situation again.”
Raman said that those reports have not been given to the council even after they requested them.
“There are after action reports that have been requested by the council and that happen after every major incident like this.”
In the meantime, KTLA made a public records request of Crowley’s phone messages on the day of the fire where her Deputy Fire Chief Jason Hing messaged he briefed Crowley that he messaged Harris-Dawson about the city’s fire deployment, preparations and their need for more resources.
The National Weather Service’s Los Angeles office provided KTLA with a detailed timeline about when they first started alerting officials about the dangerous wind event leading up to the deadly Palisades Fire in early January
Starting back on Dec. 30, 2024, the agency began holding briefings. An afternoon call and summary from notes with fire and emergency partners highlighted: “Growing potential for very warm and gusty Santa Ana winds with a moderate threat for Red Flag Warnings” from Jan. 7 to Jan. 10.
Both the Palisades and Eaton Fires started on Jan. 7.
Warnings were escalated to a Red Flag Warning for L.A. and Ventura counties on Jan. 1 with winds over 35 mph.
The next day the NWS highlighted “damaging North to Northeast winds and extended period of Red Flag conditions likely over portions of Southwest California” from Jan. 6 to Jan. 10.
All of these kinds of messages led up to the fires as the mayor left for Ghana on Jan. 4.
Bass’s office told KTLA that their staff was not invited to those NWS briefings. L.A. City Emergency Management and the LA Fire Department, which is not a part of the mayor’s office, said they did not have their own briefing until the day before the fires started.
Bass has also accused Crowley of sending home 1,000 firefighters the day the fires broke out. However, the L.A. Fire Union claims there were not enough fire trucks and engines to put those firefighters in.
