{"id":1939,"date":"2025-02-22T17:18:13","date_gmt":"2025-02-22T17:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/?p=1939"},"modified":"2025-02-22T17:18:15","modified_gmt":"2025-02-22T17:18:15","slug":"la-mayor-fires-embattled-dei-pick-fire-chief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/2025\/02\/22\/la-mayor-fires-embattled-dei-pick-fire-chief\/","title":{"rendered":"LA Mayor Fires Embattled DEI-Pick Fire Chief"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"LA Image Credit: Mario Tama \/ Staff \/ Getty Images<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democrat LA Mayor Karen Bass has fired her embattled fire chief, Kristin Crowley, as she struggles to contain public anger at official incompetence over the handling of last month\u2019s devastating wildfires.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kristin Crowley has been widely criticized as a \u201cDEI pick\u201d whose sole qualification for the job was that she wasn\u2019t a white man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayor Bass announced her removal<\/a> on Friday, in a public statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cActing in the best interests of Los Angeles\u2019 public safety, and for the operations of the Los Angeles Fire Department, I have removed Kristin Crowley as Fire Chief,\u201d the statement reads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe heroism of our firefighters \u2013 during the Palisades fire and every single day \u2013 is without question. Bringing new leadership to the fire department is what our city needs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayor Bass has also faced direct accusations of blame for her part in the fires, including deep cuts to firefighting budgets, and critics are already saying the firing of Kristin Crowley is an attempt to deflect blame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bass was on official business in Ghana when the fires broke out at the beginning of January, and was trying to close 16 fire stations the week before the conflagrations broke out. Hundreds of thousands of people have now signed<\/a> a petition for her to resign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other officials who have been singled out include the city\u2019s water chief, Janisse Qui\u00f1ones, who was well aware<\/a> the Santa Ynez reservoir was empty and disconnected, denying the city millions of gallons of water, and that large numbers of hydrants in the city were broken. The reservoir was apparently scheduled for maintenance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Newsweek reported<\/a><\/em> that state governor Gavin Newsom approved cuts of over $100 million to seven state-level \u201cfirefighting and resilience\u201d programs in June of last year. The cuts included $28 million from state conservancies that increase resilience to wildfires; $12 million from a project to protect homes from fires; $8 million from wildlife monitoring and research; $4 million from a forestry project that shows homeowners how to manage their land and protect against fires; and $5 million from vegetation-management programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Estimates suggest that the damage caused by the fires could cost well upwards of $150 billion, or around 4% of the state\u2019s entire GDP. Dozens of people were killed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image Credit: Mario Tama \/ Staff \/ Getty Images Democrat LA Mayor Karen Bass has fired her embattled fire chief, Kristin Crowley, as she struggles to contain public anger at official incompetence over the handling of last month\u2019s devastating wildfires….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","wpcat-1-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1940,"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939\/revisions\/1940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}