Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles sought to deflect criticism of the city’s response to a series of uncontrolled wildfires during a news conference on Thursday in which she faced pointed questions about the city’s preparedness — and her own — ahead of what has become one of the biggest natural disasters in the state’s history.
Ms. Bass dismissed a question about her leadership, saying that she was currently focused only on saving lives, and said any evaluation of mistakes or failures by “any body, department, individual” would come later. She avoided answering a question about her absence from the city at the start of the crisis, which began while she was on a trip abroad.
As crews continue to battle multiple fires across Los Angeles County, residents are raising concerns about the city’s response, including whether there was adequate warning about the likelihood of devastating fires and why there was a shortage of water and firefighters during the initial efforts to control the blazes.
During a question-and-answer period at Thursday’s news conference, Ms. Bass rejected the harshest characterizations of the city’s response, and repeatedly cited what she called the “unprecedented” nature of the fires as a factor in the difficulty of suppressing them as they began to spread on Tuesday.
Ms. Bass was not in the city at the time; she had traveled to Ghana for the inauguration of that country’s new president and did not return to Los Angeles until Wednesday afternoon. By then, more than a thousand homes and other structures had burned, and tens of thousands of people had been forced to evacuate.
The first question she faced on Thursday morning noted her absence, even as the city was issuing a news release warning about the fire’s potential. “My question to you,” the reporter asked, “is, what explains this lack of preparation and rapid response?”
The mayor declined to answer the question in her response, saying that her focus was on saving lives and homes. Cutting off a follow-up with a raised finger, she said that a reckoning would only come after the crisis had passed.
When the reporter followed up again by asking if Ms. Bass felt her leadership had been effective, she calmly replied, “I just said what I believe is the most important thing for us to do right now, and that is going to continue to be my focus.”
In her prepared remarks before the questions, Ms. Bass had struck an optimistic tone, highlighting the progress firefighters had made with the help of air operations. She also encouraged people across the country to find ways to help.
But later, she offered a glimpse into her own unease with the challenges firefighters have faced. Those included fire hydrants that ran dry in some places amid the excessive demand. A reporter asked if she was frustrated.
“Of course, I am absolutely frustrated by that,” she said.
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