{"id":199720,"date":"2026-03-01T21:36:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T21:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/199720\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T21:36:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T21:36:08","slug":"dan-walters-los-angeles-mayor-karen-bass-deflects-blame-adds-insult-to-injury-for-wildfire-victims-opinions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/199720\/","title":{"rendered":"Dan Walters: Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass Deflects Blame, Adds Insult to Injury for Wildfire Victims | Opinions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Noozhawk republishes news articles and commentaries from\u00a0CalMatters<\/a>\u00a0on state and local policy issues that affect Santa Barbara County readers.<\/p>\n

The wildfires that swept through Los Angeles 13 months ago\u00a0destroyed thousands of homes<\/a>\u00a0and businesses, with almost incalculable financial losses, and they killed at least 31 people.<\/p>\n

Recovery has scarcely begun, but insult is being added to fire victims\u2019 injuries as local officials \u2014\u00a0especially Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass<\/a> \u2014 engage in a tawdry game of finger-pointing.<\/p>\n

When former Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley\u00a0filed a lawsuit last week<\/a>, claiming Bass fired her to shift blame for the city\u2019s chaotic fire response, it was just the latest\u00a0episode of a saga<\/a>\u00a0that began with Bass on a junket to Africa as flames engulfed her city.<\/p>\n

When she was in Congress<\/a>, Bass used her position as a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee<\/a> to travel widely on the taxpayers\u2019 dime, particularly to Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went to Africa every couple of months, all the time,\u201d\u00a0she told The New York Times<\/a>\u00a0in a 2021 interview, adding that giving up the travel would be a negative aspect of becoming mayor.<\/p>\n

She told the Times that if elected, \u201cnot only would I of course live here, but I also would not travel internationally \u2014 the only places I would go would be D.C., Sacramento, San Francisco and New York, in relation to L.A.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"FormerFormer Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley has filed a lawsuit alleging she was fired in retaliation as blame intensified over the city\u2019s response during the deadly and devastating 2025 Palisades Fire. Credit: Gary Apodaca \/ Los Angeles Fire Department photo via CalMatters<\/p>\n

However, she made a number of international sojourns after the election, including one to Ghana, just as Los Angeles residents were being warned that strong santa ana winds could spark wildfires.<\/p>\n

Thus, Bass was a half-globe away when the fires erupted.<\/p>\n

It was what political professionals call \u201cbad optics.\u201d And they were about to get worse.<\/p>\n

Crowley alleged that her department had been shorted money needed to improve fire responses. Bass denied the allegation and fired the chief.<\/p>\n

Crowley\u2019s lawsuit claiming Bass \u201corchestrated a campaign of retaliation\u201d is the least of Bass\u2019 fire-related concerns as she seeks re-election this year.<\/p>\n

Beginning in December, the Los Angeles Times<\/a> has published revelations about how politics has intruded on a\u00a0supposedly dispassionate report<\/a>\u00a0on the Los Angeles Fire Department\u2019s<\/a> wildfire responses.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor months after the Palisades Fire<\/a>, many who had lost their homes eagerly awaited the LAFD\u2019s after-action report, which was expected to provide a frank evaluation of the agency\u2019s handling of the disaster,\u201d the\u00a0first Times article said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cA first draft was completed by August, possibly earlier.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then the deletions and other changes began \u2014 behind closed doors \u2014 in what amounted to an effort to downplay the failures of city and LAFD leadership in preparing for and fighting the Jan. 7 fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes,\u201d records obtained by The Times show.<\/p>\n

In response to The Times revelation, Bass distanced herself from it and ordered another investigation of LAFD responses, this time by the new fire chief, Jaime Moore<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe deletions and other changes began \u2014 behind closed doors \u2014 in what amounted to an effort to downplay the failures of city and LAFD leadership in preparing for and fighting the Jan. 7 fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

LOS ANGELES TIMES<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

But then the newspaper\u00a0dropped another bombshell in February<\/a>. It reported that \u201ctwo sources with knowledge of Bass\u2019 office said that after receiving an early draft, the mayor told then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva<\/a> that the report could expose the city to legal liabilities for those failures. Bass wanted key findings about the LAFD\u2019s actions removed or softened before the report was made public, the sources said \u2014 and that is what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Times reporting is another confirmation that professional journalism is a vital check on political gaslighting.<\/p>\n

It also demonstrates that Bass \u2014 who until Los Angeles had never managed anything of importance as she climbed the political ladder \u2014 is ill-equipped to run the nation\u2019s second largest city.<\/p>\n

Finally, it\u2019s doubtful Bass will lose her job. While there will be dozens of names on the ballot, her only challenger of note is a left-leaning member of the city council,\u00a0Nitthya Raman<\/a>, who is even less qualified.<\/p>\n

This commentary was\u00a0originally published on CalMatters and is reposted with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Noozhawk republishes news articles and commentaries from\u00a0CalMatters\u00a0on state and local policy issues that affect Santa Barbara County readers.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49,471],"class_list":{"0":"post-199720","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-la","9":"tag-la-headlines","10":"tag-la-news","11":"tag-los-angeles","12":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","13":"tag-los-angeles-news","14":"tag-opinions"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}