If you've been following this story then you probably remember that ever since mid-February LA Mayor Karen Bass has been doing her best to blame others for her decision to leave the country in advance of one of the worst fires the city has ever seen.
On Feb. 19 she told a local news reporter "although there were warnings, that I frankly wasn't aware of" the real issue was a lack of preparation by Fire Chief Crowley. She went on to say that she wouldn't even have gone to San Diego (much less Ghana) if she'd been made aware of the danger. "It didn't reach that level, to me, to say something terrible could happen," Bass claimed. She said she didn't know why she hadn't gotten the message but the implication was that Chief Crowley was at fault.
Two days later, Mayor Bass fired Chief Crowley saying she hadn't received a call from the Chief prior to the fires. This missing call was presented as the key to Bass's own failure to even be here. But today the LA Times reports that more than a dozen of Bass's top aides received a warning about the fire danger before she left the country.
Correspondence obtained by The Times through a public records request showed that the Emergency Management Department was advising mayoral staffers of the weather outlook, in the Jan. 3 email and messages over the following days, as the forecasts grew increasingly dire.
More than a dozen Bass aides received the Jan. 3 email, which included multiple attachments from the National Weather Service. An EMD official also wrote that a “tentative calendar invite” to the Monday meeting would follow.
Deputy Mayor Zach Seidl, who received the email and oversees communications for Bass, downplayed its importance, saying it did not suggest imminent catastrophe. At that point, he said, the email was referring to a meeting that was tentative...
EMD spokesperson Joseph Riser told The Times that “tentative” referred to the exact date and time of the Monday meeting, not whether it would take place.
So let's spell this out even more clearly. January 3 was a Friday and the email went out around 2:30 in the afternoon. The email included a 10-page attachment from the National Weather Service which included these graphics:
A Fire Weather Watch is in effect Tuesday-Friday for portions of LA/Ventura Counties. There is the potential for damaging north to northeast winds, that are likely to peak Tuesday-Wednesday.
— NWS Los Angeles (@NWSLosAngeles) January 3, 2025
With no significant rainfall yet, fire season will continue in to the New Year! #CAwx pic.twitter.com/fahxe7RIpI
Not only was there a big red flame to signify fire danger, the other graphic indicated that winds of up to 80 mph were possible. In short, all of the information that this was shaping up as a uniquely dangerous windstorm was there. More than 100 people including firefighters and police and the DWP got the email, including about a dozen of Bass's top aides. The email also mentioned a follow-up meeting about the conditions was planned for the following week with the exact date and time to follow. That was Friday afternoon. Bass then left for Ghana the following day, Saturday Jan. 4th.
It's true that Mayor Bass was not on the distribution list for that email so she didn't receive the warning directly. Still, if Bass is looking for people to blame for not altering her to the danger, there are at least a dozen people on her immediate staff who dropped the ball. Why hasn't she blamed any of them for failing the city? Why hasn't she fired any of them?
City councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who supports former fire chief Crowley said: '(Bass) keeps saying, "I wouldn’t have left had I known." But her staff did know.
'This verifies that her staff was notified of the potential threat by EMD, whose responsibility it is to let us know of these potential weather events.'
Did they even drop the ball? We're being asked to believe that no one on her staff told Bass about the fire and wind danger described in that Jan. 3 email, but we don't actually know that's true. Just because there isn't an email chain sent to her before she left the country doesn't mean no one mentioned it to her in person or by phone. All we have is the mayor's word on that and given that her response has been silence followed by blame shifting onto the Fire Chief who criticized her publicly, I'm not sure she deserves the benefit of the doubt.
Finally, a Karen Bass recall committee has just been formed. It's probably a long shot in a deep blue city where Democrats are almost never held accountable but I guess it's worth a try.
