The former chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department appealed her dismissal on Thursday, less than a week after Mayor Karen Bass removed her from the post and blamed her for not being prepared as a wildfire devastated the city’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood.
Kristin Crowley, the former chief, sent a letter to the Los Angeles City Council informing its members of her decision to appeal. “I look forward to hearing from you about next steps, if any,” she wrote on Thursday.
Zach Seidl, a spokesman for the mayor, said that Ms. Crowley had a right to appeal.
But it is unlikely to succeed. Two-thirds of the City Council, or 10 of its 15 members, would need to approve the appeal for Ms. Crowley to be reinstated, according to the City Charter. At least four council members, including the council president, stood behind Mayor Bass at the news conference last week as she announced Ms. Crowley’s replacement.
Ms. Bass has said publicly that she made a mistake leaving the country and traveling to Ghana days before the wildfires erupted across the region in early January. For weeks, she privately told friends that she would never have left had she been fully briefed on the scope of the threat.
The mayor blamed Ms. Crowley for that lack of warning, an assertion that the chief has disputed. Ms. Crowley said that before Ms. Bass left the country, there had been numerous alerts from weather forecasters about the dangerous conditions.
The dismissal came after weeks of tension. Veteran fire officials in the region had claimed that the response helmed by Ms. Crowley was significantly less aggressive and experienced than the department had mounted in past situations of high fire risk. Ms. Crowley maintained that the department had been underfunded, which the mayor and city budget officials denied.
When Ms. Crowley was removed, the mayor said that she would remain with the Fire Department in an assignment to be determined by the new interim chief. At the time, Ms. Crowley seemed prepared to accept the agreement.
But leaders of the city firefighters’ union have since pushed back on her removal, charging that Ms. Crowley was scapegoated for a ferocious fire driven by hurricane-force winds that would have been devastating regardless, and for ongoing budget constraints that were the fault of City Hall.
Ms. Bass’s predecessor, Eric Garcetti, had appointed Ms. Crowley. The City Council has typically deferred to the mayor’s right to appoint new general managers.
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