XPost: alt.wildland.firefighting, alt.government.employees, alt.los-angeles XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, sac.politics

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/us/los-angeles-mayor-fire-response.html

Some residents said Mayor Karen Bass should have canceled her trip to
Ghana when weather warnings in Los Angeles grew increasingly dire.

When a series of dangerous, wind-driven fires broke out on Tuesday in the
Los Angeles area, Mayor Karen Bass was on the other side of the globe,
part of a delegation sent by President Biden to Ghana for the inauguration
of its new president.

Ms. Bass, a former Democratic congresswoman who became mayor in late 2022,
did not return to Los Angeles until Wednesday afternoon, by which point
more than 1,000 homes had burned and 100,000 people across the region had
been forced to flee from their homes.

The mayor’s absence has drawn criticism from some Angelenos. Many said
there was insufficient warning from officials about the likelihood of devastating fires, even as weather forecasts predicted extreme danger this week.

By Thursday last week, the National Weather Service in Los Angeles had
begun warning of “extreme fire weather conditions.” By Sunday, the
warnings had become even more dire — “rapid fire growth and extreme
behavior with any fire starts.”

But Mayor Bass posted her first warning on X about the wind storm on
Monday, when she was already in Ghana. Her office did not send out a news release about fire risk until nearly 11 a.m. on Tuesday morning, after the blaze in Pacific Palisades had already broken out.

“There was zero preparation. There was zero thought here,” said Michael Gonzales, 47, whose home burned down in Pacific Palisades, a wealthy neighborhood that overlooks the Pacific Ocean. His family of five was
camped out in a hotel in Santa Monica on Wednesday as they began figuring
out where they will live.

Mr. Gonzales, a lawyer, said he believed Mayor Bass made a poor decision
to remain overseas despite forecasters warning of the most dangerous fire conditions in more than a decade.

“It was an utter breakdown in leadership and it starts with the mayor’s office,” he said in an interview.

In her first news conference since returning to Los Angeles, Mayor Bass on Wednesday defended her administration when asked about criticisms of the
city’s response to the fire. She said the disaster was the result of
months of little rain and winds that had not been seen in the city for at
least 14 years.

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“We have to resist any, any effort to pull us apart,” she said.

Ms. Bass said that she returned home as quickly as she could after the
fires tore through Pacific Palisades and other parts of Southern
California.

“I took the fastest route back, which included being on a military plane,”
she said.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power filled all 114 available
water reservoirs and storage facilities ahead of the windstorm, including
the ones in the Palisades area, said Janisse Quiñones, the department’s
chief executive. Without aerial water supply, the heavy use of fire
hydrants depleted the tanks, which crews were now working to refill, she
said.

Rick Caruso, a real estate developer who lost to Ms. Bass in the mayoral
race in 2022, said that he had a team of private firefighters in Pacific Palisades on Tuesday night helping to protect a major outdoor retail space
he owns, as well as some nearby homes. All night, he said, they were
telling him that water was in short supply.

City officials confirmed that water tanks ran dry during the intense
firefight early Wednesday in Pacific Palisades because demand surged to
four times the normal rate for 15 hours. The system, they suggested, was
not designed to supply so much water in such a short period.

“The lack of water in the hydrants, I don’t think there’s an excuse,” Mr. Caruso said. “This was very predictable,” he said, referring to the
forecasts that predicted the devastating windstorm.

Mr. Caruso, who served two stints as president of the Los Angeles
Department of Water and Power, said that it will take to time to account
for why firefighters struggled to get enough water to fight the fires.

“This is a massive failure of epic proportions,” he said. “To know the
storm was coming and then to leave, and not rush back. Leadership matters
and the first thing is to be present.”


--
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