Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has been under fire for approving lavish contracts for city employees just months before the catastrophic wildfires that have ravaged the city. According to city records, these contracts, which significantly boosted the wages of civilian workers, directly contributed to the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) facing severe budget cuts, impacting its wildfire response capabilities.

Mayor Bass, who has been in office since 2022, signed off on contracts that saw civilian employees receiving between 20% to 25% salary increases over five years. The financial implications of these deals are estimated to cost the city around $4.5 billion over the contracts’ lifetime. This fiscal commitment led to a $17.6 million reduction in the LAFD’s budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, a decision that has now come under scrutiny as the city battles several devastating fires.

The Palisades Fire, which has become one of the most destructive in LA’s history, alongside the Eaton Fire, have caused widespread destruction, with thousands of structures burned and at least 16 lives lost. The reduced funding for the fire department meant fewer resources for training, equipment maintenance, and emergency response, at a time when the city was most vulnerable to such natural disasters.

Criticism has been mounting against Mayor Bass, with public figures and residents questioning the timing and prioritization of city spending. Firefighters have voiced concerns about the cuts’ impact on their readiness and effectiveness, particularly in light of the current disaster. The budget reduction has been described as “devastating” by some within the department, highlighting a significant shortfall in preparing for and responding to wildfires.

Public sentiment, as reflected in posts on X, shows a mix of frustration and disbelief over the allocation of funds towards city contracts while critical emergency services like the fire department faced cuts. The narrative on social media and in local news has been one of questioning leadership decisions at a time when the city’s safety and infrastructure were at stake.

Mayor Bass, upon returning from an international trip amidst the fires, has been largely silent on these specific decisions, focusing instead on the immediate response to the crisis. However, the controversy surrounding her financial choices has not abated, with many calling for a reevaluation of budget priorities to ensure better preparedness for future emergencies.

This situation underscores a broader debate on how cities manage their budgets, especially in areas prone to natural disasters like wildfires, where every dollar can mean the difference between life and death, or property saved versus destroyed.

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UPDATE: Mayor Bass’ office is now saying she did not fire Kristin Crowley pic.twitter.com/3tdzrRWfkO

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) January 11, 2025

Original Story: (Discern Report)—Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley was dismissed by Mayor Karen Bass on Friday shortly after she publicly criticized city leadership for insufficient funding of the fire department. The decision to fire Crowley came hours after she gave an interview to Fox LA where she highlighted the severe impact of a $17.6 million budget cut on the department’s emergency response capabilities, particularly in the context of preparing for large-scale events like wildfires.

Crowley had previously sent a memo to Mayor Bass on December 4, warning that the budget cuts would limit the department’s capacity to train for and respond to emergencies. Her public statements included a direct critique of the city’s failure to match the fire department’s growth with the city’s expansion, pointing out that despite the doubling of LA’s population since 1960, the number of fire stations has not kept pace.

The firing has sparked discussions regarding the prioritization of funding in public safety, especially as California faces increasing threats from wildfires. Critics argue that the budget cuts, pushed through by Mayor Bass, might have compromised the city’s ability to manage these threats effectively.

This incident has also highlighted broader issues of leadership and accountability in emergency services management, with Crowley’s dismissal seen by some as a response to her outspokenness rather than a reflection of her performance. The situation has left the Los Angeles community questioning the city’s preparedness for future crises, given the substantial cuts to the fire department’s operational budget.

Here’s the discussion earlier about Crowley’s statement:

Article generated from corporate media reports.

But is this solely a case of city officials letting down their fire department? Or does the accountability extend deeper across all levels of government? Let’s break down the challenges, failures, and what this means for Los Angeles—and beyond.

The Ripple Effect of Government Failure

When a city as massive as Los Angeles experiences operational failures, the consequences are rarely isolated. This isn’t just a challenge for LA residents or even Californians. The financial, logistical, and economic impacts spread across the nation.

Home to over 4 million people, Los Angeles is the second-most populous city in the United States. A city-wide failure at this scale inevitably affects federal resources, insurance markets, and supply chains. Whether you’re in Miami, Seattle, or any other corner of the country, chances are you’ll feel the impact—if not directly, then through rising insurance rates or disrupted goods and services.

Budget Cuts and Leadership Decisions

Mayor Karen Bass has come under scrutiny for budgetary decisions that many argue have left the fire department inadequately prepared. Reports indicate that $17.6 million was cut from the fire department’s budget to fund programs aiding undocumented immigrants and other city initiatives. This is on top of an additional proposed $49 million reduction, which fortunately didn’t pass.

These funding decisions come at a steep cost. Firefighters are left without proper resources to combat surging emergencies, including the very wildfires wreaking havoc today. It’s a sobering reminder of how prioritizing certain initiatives over critical infrastructure can leave communities vulnerable.

A County and State in Crisis

Failures don’t stop at the city level. Los Angeles County has struggled to coordinate emergency alerts effectively, with reports of evacuation notices being misdirected to millions of unintended recipients. One glaring example saw Orange County residents panicking after receiving evacuation notices for fires nowhere near them. This disorganized response eroded trust in emergency systems and created unnecessary chaos.

At the state level, California’s government—overseeing what would be the fifth-largest economy in the world if it were an independent nation—seems equally constrained. Years of systemic inefficiency, bloated bureaucracy, and questionable priorities have left a state rich in resources struggling to meet its most basic responsibilities.

For many residents, California’s leadership doesn’t inspire confidence. It’s not just incompetence—it’s a consistent cycle of mismanagement that puts lives at risk.

Kristin Crowley’s Role and Accountability

Fire Chief Kristin Crowley has not been shy about criticizing city leadership. In interviews, she’s repeatedly stated that her department isn’t getting what it needs to meet the community’s demands. However, this raises an important question: Why didn’t she sound the alarm sooner?

Crowley’s focus on promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives underscored much of her tenure. While breaking barriers as the first openly LGBTQ+ woman to lead the department is a historic achievement, critics argue that her focus was misplaced when pressing resource shortages posed a looming threat.

If Crowley knew the department lacked the resources to deal with significant fires, she had a duty to sound the alarm much earlier. Instead, her energies seemed directed toward personal and symbolic achievements rather than advocating for critical funding. Whether this was due to poor judgment, incompetence, or political caution, it underscores a leadership gap at a crucial time.

Political Agendas vs. Public Safety

One of the most troubling aspects of this crisis is how political agendas appear to have taken priority over public safety concerns. Leaders like Mayor Karen Bass and others at different levels of government seemingly focused more on progressive programs than on ensuring preparedness for emergencies of this scale.

The result? A fire chief under-resourced, firefighters stretching themselves thin, and a population caught in the crossfire—literally. As the death toll rises, the consequences of poor governance become tragically clear.

What Comes Next?

The reality of this crisis goes beyond pointing fingers. It’s a wake-up call for Los Angeles and every city confronting resource shortages and emergency preparedness. Leaders must balance long-term initiatives with the immediate needs of essential services like public safety.

Without meaningful changes in leadership, priorities, and funding, this isn’t the last time Californians—or Americans as a whole—will bear the fallout of systemic incompetence.

Final Thoughts

Los Angeles’ current predicament is a glaring example of how bad policies breed dangerous outcomes. From city officials cutting critical budgets, to county mismanagement, to a state government riddled with inefficiency, every level of leadership shares the blame.

For Chief Kristin Crowley, the time to act decisively has long passed. Her acknowledgment of failure doesn’t absolve her of responsibility for knowing her department’s limitations and failing to raise the alarm months ago. Breaking glass ceilings is commendable, but leadership is about action—and Los Angeles residents shouldn’t have to pay the price for political miscalculations.

This crisis demands accountability, reform, and above all, a shift in priorities. Lives depend on it.

Video Summary generated with assistance of AI.

(Daily Signal)—I’m here in California. I’ve been a lifelong resident of the state, fifth generation to live in the same house. I had a house in the Sierra, and it would almost burn down three years ago during the Aspen Fire, and I’m speaking on the evening when you’ve all heard about the disastrous fire in Los Angeles.

As I’m speaking on a Wednesday night, there have been 15,000 acres, 1,000 structures destroyed. Nobody knows how many people are killed or missing. And how do we characterize this? Everybody’s talking about the Santa Ana winds, climate change—I mean everybody, the people in power.

But it was preventable. And once it started, this fire, it could have been assuaged. You could have had it lessened, that the severity didn’t have to be as catastrophic. So, I would characterize it as a DEI–Green New Deal hydrogen bomb. It’s something out of “Dante’s Inferno.”

And what I mean by that is, it’s a systems breakdown, a civilizational collapse. When you look at the people in charge, [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom flew in, to sort of do these performance-art stunts, but he has systematically ensured that water out of the Sacramento River and the watershed of Northern California would go out to the sea, rather than into the aqueduct, so Los Angeles didn’t have sufficient amounts of water.

He bragged not very long ago that he blew up four dams on the Klamath River. They provided 80,000 homes with clean hydroelectric power. They offered recreation, flood control, irrigation. He blew them up.

California’s fire management, whether we look at the Paradise Fire or the Aspen Fire near where I’m speaking, it destroyed 60 million trees. We have no timber industry in California. [Newsom’s] dismantled it.

We don’t clean the forest. We don’t let loggers come in and have a viable livelihood by harvesting trees. It’s sort of considered natural to let these things burn or to at least create the conditions in which they will inevitably be burned.

It’s almost as if we don’t like humans. We worry about grubs and worms and birds and the ecosystem.

The second breakdown was the mayor, Karen Bass, was in Africa. You tell me why the mayor of the third-largest city in the United States at fire season, when she had been warned and warned for days on end that the Santa Ana winds were up to 100 miles an hour in the evening, and there was a danger of fire, and she goes off to Africa for the inauguration of the president of Ghana.

With all due respect, Mayor, but who cares? You have an obligation to the 6 million people of greater Los Angeles. And then we have the fire chief. I don’t really care that she’s LGBTQ, I don’t care [about] any of that. All I do care is her emphases. She’s been bragging for the last two years that her goal was to make sure [the Fire Department] was diverse and inclusive.

That can be good if it’s competent. But when you announce that 70% of your hiring will not be meritocratic, but will be based on diversity, equity, inclusion, then you’re not putting the interest of your constituents first.

There were not even enough, there wasn’t enough water pressure in Pacific Palisades. Pacific Palisades is not where I live. It’s one of the wealthiest, most exclusive neighborhoods in the United States. If they don’t have water, then no one’s going to get water, believe me.

There’s not enough insurance. There were famous actors that didn’t have insurance. Why? Because industry is overregulated, it’s fraught with people who make fraudulent claims, and the insurance industry knows that California is hostile to it, but more importantly that it will never clean up its forest or take preventive, time-tried, ancient protocols to lessen the dangers of fire.

And so put it all together, whether it’s a deliberate policy to not store water, not preserve water. Last year was one of the wettest years that we’ve had. We’ve had three out of the last four years have been very wet. We had a huge snowpack. We had rivers that were running in 19th-century fashion, but out to the sea to save the delta smelt.

So, it was a total systems collapse from the idea of not spending money on irrigation, storage, water, fire prevention, force management, a viable insurance industry, a DEI hierarchy. You put it all together and it’s something like a DEI-Green New Deal hydrogen bomb.

Gavin Newsom was fiddling, as he’s almost Nero Newsom. And this has been something that is just unimaginable, this system’s breakdown.

And to finish, what we’re seeing in California is a state with 40 million people. And yet the people who run it feel that it should return to a 19^th-century pastoral condition. They are decivilizing the state, and deindustrializing the state, and defarming the state, but they’re not telling the 40 million people that their lifestyles will have to revert back to the 19th century when you had no protection from fire, you didn’t have enough water in California, you didn’t have enough power, you didn’t pump oil.

So, we are deliberately making these decisions not to develop energy, not to develop a timber industry, not to protect the insurance industry, not to protect houses and property.

And we’re doing it in almost a purely nihilistic fashion. And Karen Bass should resign. She came to the airport, back from Africa. She had nothing to say. She was confronted at the airport: “Why were you in Africa? Why did you cut the fire department?”

They cut the fire department by almost $18 million. They gave fire protective equipment to Ukraine’s first responders, and she had nothing to say. She had nothing to say because she couldn’t say anything.

I don’t want to be too pessimistic or bleak tonight, but this is one of the most alarming symptoms of a society gone mad, and if this continues, and if this were to spread to other states, we would become a Third World country if we’re not in parts already.

Los Angeles County residents were thrown into disarray on Thursday night when they received an erroneous evacuation alert. The warning, intended for those near the Kenneth Fire in Woodland Hills, was mistakenly broadcast to millions across the county, urging them to gather loved ones, pets, and supplies and evacuate their homes.

The panic was palpable as residents, like Thomas Jenkins from Downtown LA, began preparing to leave their homes only to learn moments later that the alert was a mistake. “I immediately jumped up and started packing my things even though I live Downtown,” Jenkins shared with The Post, expressing frustration over the unnecessary alarm. “It was irresponsible, annoying and caused panic for nothing.”

Social media platforms, including X, were flooded with reactions from confused and angry residents. One anonymous user described the ordeal of their neighbor, who was left frantic and in a panic. Another user criticized the handling of the situation as a “complete and utter failure” and highlighted the added stress to those already dealing with the ongoing wildfires.

The evacuation alert was meant for a specific area where the Kenneth Fire was actively burning, but a technical error led to the countywide dissemination. Kevin McGowan, Director of the Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management, acknowledged the mishap, stating, “An evacuation order for residents near the Kenneth Fire currently burning in West Hills was mistakenly issued to nearly 10 million County residents along with some residents of neighboring counties.”

County Supervisor Janice Hahn was quick to clarify the error on social media, informing the public that the evacuation warning was mistakenly issued countywide due to a technical glitch. She assured that a correction would follow.

This incident has brought the reliability of emergency alert systems into question, especially given the backdrop of multiple wildfires currently devastating the region. The Palisades Fire, among others, is reported as the most destructive in the county’s history, with containment efforts still at 0%.

Residents and officials are now calling for improvements in communication and emergency management to prevent such errors in the future, as the city continues to battle the natural calamity alongside the fallout from this significant communication blunder.

Sarah Michelle Gellar was among the first to voice her discontent, highlighting the irony of evacuation orders amidst gridlocked traffic without any traffic control. “City of LA you want everyone to evacuate yet you have complete gridlock and not one traffic cop on the roads helping,” Gellar posted on her Instagram story, directly tagging the city’s and mayor’s official accounts.

This sentiment was echoed by other celebrities like Jillian Michaels and former “Dancing with the Stars” dancer Valentin Chmerkovskiy, who criticized the city’s preparedness and response. Chmerkovskiy pointed out the dire situation, stating, “5th largest economy on the planet. Firefighters didn’t have enough water pressure to do their jobs?!”

The fire’s impact was severe, with mandatory evacuations leading to scenes of abandoned cars on roads, further complicating the escape for residents. Actor Steve Guttenberg took matters into his own hands, helping move stranded vehicles to clear paths for emergency services, describing the scene as “a ghost town.”

James Woods, who lost his home in the fire, went beyond criticism to blame the disaster on what he described as political mismanagement by state and local leaders. He posted on X, “This isn’t climate change, this is due to liberal idiots like Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass. One doesn’t understand the first thing about fire management and the other can’t fill the water reservoirs.”

The community’s response has been one of shock and frustration, with celebrities like Chris Pratt calling for prayers for the firefighters and those unable to evacuate. The situation has spotlighted not only the immediate crisis but also broader issues about emergency preparedness and leadership in one of America’s largest cities.

The Palisades Fire underscores a critical moment for Los Angeles, where public and celebrity voices alike are demanding better from their elected officials in times of crisis.

Article generated from corporate media reports.

On Truth Social, he posted:

One of the best and most beautiful parts of the United States of America is burning down to the ground. It’s ashes, and Gavin Newscum should resign. This is all his fault!!!

Trump has been hammering Newsom non-stop since the fires started ravaging Los Angeles County, killing at least five people and destroying thousands of buildings and homes. Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Trump said:

“It’s very sad because I’ve been trying to get Gavin Newsom to allow water to come – you’d have tremendous water up there, they send it out from the Pacific – because they’re trying to protect a tiny little fish. For the sake of a smelt, they have no water… It’s a mistake of the governor, and you could say, the administration.”

Newsom’s press office offered a feeble excuse:

“LADWP said that because of the high water demand, pump stations at lower elevations did not have enough pressure refill tanks at higher elevations, and the ongoing fire hampered the ability of crews to access the pumps. Broadly speaking, there is no water shortage in Southern California right now, despite Trump’s claims that he would open some imaginary spigot.”

Democrats across the state have been taking heat. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was lambasted for not answering basic questions from a Sky News reporter when she arrived from her vacation in Africa.

To make matters worse, she botched her press conference by reading “URL” instead of giving the actual URL that residents should visit:

The fires continue to rage across the county with 0% containment as of Wednesday night.

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