People evacuate from the Pacific Palisades fire in Los Angeles on January 7, 2025. Photo / Philip Cheung, The New York Times
People evacuate from the Pacific Palisades fire in Los Angeles on January 7, 2025. Photo / Philip Cheung, The New York Times
Some residents say Mayor Karen Bass should have cancelled 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 (Wednesday NZT) in the Los Angeles area, Mayor Karen Bass was on the otherside of the globe, part of a delegation sent by President Joe Biden to Ghana for the inauguration of its new president.
Bass, a former Democratic congress member who became mayor in late 2022, did not return to LA until Wednesday afternoon, by which point more than 1000 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 behaviour with any fire starts”.
But Bass posted her first warning on social platform 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 11am 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 neighbourhood 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.
Gonzales, a lawyer, said he believed Bass made a poor decision to remain overseas despite forecasters warning of the most dangerous fire conditions in more than a decade.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass in July 2024. Photo / Alex Welsh, The New York Times
“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, 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.
“We have to resist any, any effort to pull us apart,” she said.
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.
Rick Caruso, a real estate developer who lost to 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.
Residents battle a fire in Altadena, LA County on January 8. Photo / Kyle Grillot, The New York Times
City officials confirmed that water tanks ran dry during the intense firefight early on 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,” Caruso said. “This was very predictable,” he said, referring to the forecasts that predicted the devastating windstorm.
Caruso, who served two stints as president of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said that it will take 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.”
