A veteran Los Angeles-area fire chief ripped into Mayor Karen Bass her “failure of leadership” by taking a trip to Africa just days before the deadly fires erupted.
Redondo Beach Fire Chief Patrick Butler took direct aim at mayor Bass and California officials under Governor Gavin Newsom, saying their dysfunctional leadership during the crisis worsened the devastation from the inferno that erupted on January 7.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is conducting an ongoing probe that could ultimately determine who was responsible for the blaze.
‘’During the critical preparedness period, the mayor was out of the country despite knowledge of the forecasted life-threatening conditions,” Butler said, referencing Bass’s controversial trip to Ghana Africa before the fires.
”Responsibility for continuity of leadership and citywide coordination rests with the mayor, and in this case, that responsibility was not met.”
”This was not a failure of effort by firefighters,” Butler added. ”It was a failure of leadership above them.”
Butler’s testimony was part of an inquiry by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations into the Palisades Fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed more than 6,800 homes.
A neighboring blaze, the Eaton Fire in the San Gabriel Mountains, burned simultaneously, killing 19 people and and destroying more than 9,400 homes.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), the committee’s chair, dismissed post-fire explanations from city and state leaders as a ”whitewash” and vowed to compel testimony and subpoena records to determine how Los Angeles and California officials failed to respond.
”The main part of this investigation is to expose what happened, name names and identify the incompetence so it doesn’t happen again,” Johnson said. ”This has to be a blame game. People lost their lives.”
Meanwhile Rick Crawford, a retired battalion chief with the Los Angeles Fire Department, described the Palisades Fire as a ”case study” in how government leadership can bungle a wildfire into a deadly catastrophe, stressing that the inferno was not ”unforeseeable”.
”Wildfires are not disasters at ignition,” Crawford said. ”They become disasters when warnings are recognized but fail to trigger executive action.”
Bass and Newsom did not respond to The Post requests for comment.
Butler also alleged that official reports on the Palisades Fire were ”altered” to protect reputations – a claim Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley confirmed earlier this month to the Los Angeles Times.
”Critical observations were removed or softened, and failures were reframed,” Butler told the committee. ”After-action reviews exist to establish the truth and prevent recurrence. When they are shaped to protect reputations or manage narrative, future lives are put at risk.’’
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Lawmakers also examined billions of dollars in delayed Federal Emergency Management Agency funding for recovery efforts and how the backlog could worsen future disasters.
President Trump announced Tuesday that he had signed an executive order aimed at expeditingrebuilding permits.
Spencer Hawkins, chair of government affairs for the International Association of Emergency Managers, warned that shifting federal policies and leadership instability are eroding the nation’s disaster readiness.
”Emergency managers across the nation feel the ground moving under their feet without enough warning,’ Hawkins said. ‘This is not an ideological or partisan issue. A shift in federal disaster support affects California residents and West Virginia residents equally.’
Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) pressed witnesses on FEMA’s role as the federal government faces a possible shutdown, with Democrats threatening to withhold funding over immigration enforcement.
”It’s the cascading effects,” Crawford said. ”When the cameras are gone and everyone has gone home, when the smoke has cleared, that’s when you start to see the effects of a lack of FEMA funding.”
Moreno replied: ”Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face. It’s cutting your nose, your ears and everything else.”
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