Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has fired Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley over the chief’s handling of the Palisades fire.
“Acting in the best interests of Los Angeles’ public safety, and for the operations of the Los Angeles Fire Department, I have removed Kristin Crowley as Fire Chief,” Bass said in a statement Friday. “We know that 1,000 firefighters that could have been on duty on the morning the fires broke out were instead sent home on Chief Crowley’s watch.”
“Furthermore, a necessary step to an investigation was the President of the Fire Commission telling Chief Crowley to do an after action report on the fires. The Chief refused. These require her removal,” Bass continued. “The heroism of our firefighters — during the Palisades fire and every single day — is without question. Bringing new leadership to the Fire Department is what our city needs.”
The LAFD didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Crowley’s dismissal.
The tensions between Bass and Crowley date back to at least early January, in the days after the fire broke out.
On Jan. 10, while the Palisades blaze was still out of control, Crowley gave an extraordinary television interview, telling a Fox 11 reporter that the city of Los Angeles — and by implication her boss, Bass — had failed her and her department.
She went on to describe her agencies as understaffed and underfunded, calling the situation “no longer sustainable.”
Later that day, Crowley had equally strong words for CNN’s Jake Tapper, telling him the fire department lacks enough mechanics to repair broken-down emergency vehicles.
When Tapper asked whether the city’s budget cuts affected her agency’s ability to fight the wildfires, she responded: “I want to be very, very clear. Yes.”
Hours later, Crowley was summoned to the mayor’s office. The closed-door meeting went so long that Bass did not show up for her own late afternoon wildfire emergency news conference.
After that episode, Crowley and Bass continued to appear at news conferences together and said they were focused on the fire and the recovery.
Then, the mayor and her team gave a series of statements to reporters this week that suggested Crowley didn’t tell Bass about the seriousness of the fire risk, amid increasingly severe warnings about high winds, before Bass traveled overseas to Africa.
The mayor was in Ghana on Jan. 7 when the firestorm broke out. She returned the following day but was criticized for being absent.
Bass spokesperson Zach Seidl told The Times that Crowley routinely called the mayor or her team ahead of severe weather events, but did not do so before Jan. 7.
Bass also told reporters in two television interviews this week that she didn’t receive enough information about the weather. If she had, she said, she would have canceled her trip.
Mayor Eric Garcetti picked Crowley in 2022 to lead the department, and she was the first female chief in its history. She was elevated at a time when female firefighters were speaking out about patterns of sexual harassment and hazing at the department.
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