According to sources, Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley is in jeopardy of losing her job as she said her goodbyes to staff and headed into a meeting with the mayor.
Crowley told staff in her office she was getting fired by Mayor Karen Bass at a meeting 4pm on Friday.
But she emerged from the meeting saying she was still in her job – for now.
A source familiar with Crowley’s office revealed, “She was going into the meeting, telling everybody goodbye, because she was told the whole purpose of the meeting was to fire her.”
‘When she was summoned into the meeting, it was with the direct purpose to fire her.
‘Whatever happened in that meeting, minds got changed.
‘Either Bass realized it would be suicide to fire her, and came to her senses, or Crowley talked her out of it.
‘She came back in the office briefly, told her staff “I’m not fired yet” and went into a meeting with all her chiefs.
‘She’s still in that meeting with the fire chiefs right now.‘
Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley faced uncertain job security as she hugged her staff and went into a meeting with the mayor, following an honest interview with Fox LA.
Crowley acknowledged to a reporter that the city, and by extension, Mayor Karen Bass, pictured, failed its residents during the wildfires
The meeting came after Crowley lashed out against the Mayor’s cuts to her department, in an interview with a local Fox TV station around 12pm Friday.
‘My message is the fire department needs to be properly funded,’ the Chief said. ‘It’s not.’
‘Did they fail you?’ Fox LA’s Gigi Graciette asked. ‘Yes,’ Crowley replied.
The Fire Department (LAFD) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A second source close to Bass’ office told DailyMail.com that they were aware Crowley ‘was called to the office’ this afternoon, but did not know the outcome of the Mayor and Chief’s meeting.
A retired senior LAFD official told DailyMail.com that he was shocked by Crowley’s comments in her TV interview.
‘In my entire career, a fire chief has never thrown a mayor under the bus. It’s unbelievable, for her to go on the offensive like that,’ he said.
He added that amid fury over alleged failures in preparedness and in tackling the fires that leveled neighborhoods in Los Angeles this week, the city leaders are fearing for their positions and are starting to turn on each other.
‘It was a brilliant move on her part. One of them’s going to get taken out. Either they’re going to go after the Mayor or the Fire Chief,’ the ex-LAFD top brass said. ‘Saying ‘She defunded me, I didn’t have the money’ is a brilliant move.’
Tensions were already at boiling point between Bass and Crowley, even before the disastrous fires broke out on Tuesday.
The Mayor pushed through budget cuts of $17.6 million through a recent council vote, prompting Crowley to write her a memo on December 4 warning the slash ‘severely limited the department’s capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires.’
And DailyMail.com exclusively revealed a second LAFD memo written this Monday, the day before the Palisades Fire began, outlining a further $49 million of cut allegedly demanded by Bass.
In shocking statements to Fox LA on Friday, Crowley said she had not been informed that the Santa Ynez Reservoir in the Palisades had been empty and offline for weeks with scheduled maintenance by LA Department of Water and Power (DWP).
On Friday DailyMail.com revealed LAFD insiders were blaming DWP CEO Janisse Quiñones for scheduling repairs to the reservoir’s cover during brushfire season, and for failing to repair a large number hydrants which they said had been broken for years, including in the Palisades.
California Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass tour the downtown business district of Pacific Palisades
Kristin Crowley became chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department in January 2022
Cars are left charred inside a dealership in the aftermath of the Eaton Fire on Friday
Crowley also appeared to point the finger at DWP for running out of water to provide firefighters battling the blaze this week.
‘We weren’t aware,’ she said, referring to the empty reservoir. ‘I don’t know how the water gets to the hydrants. Please defer that to DWP.
‘It’s my job to stand up and say, justifiably, exactly what the fire department needs,’ the chief added.
‘When a firefighter comes up to a hydrant, we expect there’s going to be water. We don’t control the water supply. We’re there to protect lives and property.
She said her firefighters ‘did absolutely everything they could do to rescue and save people’s lives and property.’
In an extraordinary public airing of grievances, Crowley acknowledged to a reporter with KTTV that the city, and by extension, Mayor Bass, failed its residents during the wildfires.
When pushed several times if the city had failed, Crowley’s response was unflinching: ‘Yes.’
The stark admission sent shockwaves through the city, as Crowley detailed the dire state of her department.
Years of budget cuts, she said, had left the LAFD grappling with crippling staffing shortages, outdated equipment, and insufficient resource – issues she claimed had been repeatedly brought to the city’s attention.
Flames and smoke from the Palisades Fire surround a home in the community of Topanga
The Palisades Fire burns a structure in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, pictured on Wednesday
A firefighter battles the Palisades Fire as it burns a structure in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles on Tuesday
‘Since day one, we’ve identified huge gaps in regard to our service delivery and our ability of our firefighters’ boots on the ground to do their jobs,’ Crowley said.
‘This is my third budget as we’re going into 2025-2026, and what I can tell you is we are still understaffed, we’re still under-resourced, and we’re still underfunded.’
Crowley painted a grim picture of the department’s daily operations, revealing that firefighters are handling more than 1,500 calls and transporting 650 patients every day under normal conditions. The wildfires have only exacerbated these challenges.
‘We are screaming to be properly funded to make sure that our firefighters can do their jobs so that we can serve the community,’ Crowley said.
‘This isn’t a new problem. It’s been a problem for years. And it’s time for it to be fixed.’
Despite her repeated warnings and detailed memos outlining the department’s needs, the city slashed the LAFD’s budget by over $17 million in recent years.
The result, Crowley said, was predictable: slower response times and a diminished capacity to combat the growing frequency and intensity of fires.
‘Any budget cut is going to impact our ability to provide service,’ she explained. ‘If there’s a budget cut, we had to pull from somewhere else. What does that mean? That doesn’t get done or that there are delays.’
Firefighters are seen tackling one of the many blazes in the area
Firefighters try to douse the flames as a building is consumed by flames from devastating wildfires in the Pacific Palisades area of California
The devastation of the Eaton Fire is shown in a neighborhood Friday in Altadena, California
Kenneth Snowden, left, surveys the damage to his fire-ravaged property with his brother Ronnie in the aftermath of the Eaton Fire on Friday in Altadena, California
Crowley’s criticism extends beyond the immediate crisis, pointing to a systemic failure to scale the fire department’s capabilities alongside the city’s explosive growth.
‘We know we need 62 new fire stations. We need to double the size of our firefighters,’ she said. ‘The growth of this city since 1960 has doubled, and we have less fire stations.’
The fire chief called out city officials for ignoring ‘real data’ that supports the fire department’s repeated requests for increased funding.
‘When you talk about sounding the alarm and asking and requesting budgets that are easily justifiable based off of the data, real data shows what the fire department needs to serve this beautiful city and the beautiful community that we swore that we would. That’s what that is about.’
Crowley’s remarks were not just a critique but also a heartfelt plea for immediate and sustained action.
Emphasizing the non-political nature of her role, she said, ‘None of us on the fire department are politicians. We’re public servants first. We took an oath to serve the public before ourselves and even before our families.
‘What our people need to do their jobs is to make sure that we can save lives and that we can protect property to the greatest capacity,’ Crowley said. ‘But we need to be funded appropriately. And that’s where my head is at.’
Bass has yet to respond to Crowley’s blistering criticism, but the fallout is already apparent.
Accusations of negligence and failure to prioritize public safety have added fuel to mounting dissatisfaction among residents, many of whom are reeling from the devastation caused by the wildfires.
For Mayor Karen Bass, this week’s horror show was compounded by every chief executive’s worst nightmare. She was halfway around the globe, on a trip to Ghana as part of a presidential delegation.
As her city faced its greatest crisis in decades, the first-term mayor confronted a critical test of her leadership two years after taking office. After rushing home to help manage the city’s response, she pushed back against a loud chorus of critics from near and far.
‘LA has to be strong, united,’ Bass said at a press conference Thursday evening. ‘We will reject those who seek to divide us and seek to misinform.’
Bass eventually made it back to Los Angeles by military transport, but only after a more than 24-hour absence, during which critics assailed her for not being better prepared.
More than 5,000 homes burned as fire hydrants ran dry because water demand was so high it drained the city’s reserve tanks.
Garrett Yost gathers water from a pool while surveying his neighbors’ fire-ravaged properties in the aftermath of the Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of LA on Friday
The devastation of the Palisades Fire is seen in the early morning in the Pacific Palisades
Governor Gavin Newsom ordered an investigation on Friday into the city’s Department of Water and Power over the loss of water pressure. An online petition demanding Bass’ resignation garnered 33,000 signatures.
‘We have got a mayor that is out of the country, and we have got a city that is burning,’ said Rick Caruso, a developer who ran against Bass in the 2022 mayoral race, on local television Tuesday night, adding that two of his children’s houses were destroyed. ‘It looks like we´re in a third-world country here.’
Elon Musk called the mayor ‘utterly incompetent’ in a post on his social media site X, leading a charge of conservatives slamming Bass for a cut to the city fire department’s budget in July – even though it was later boosted with additional money and officials say it now has more funding than last year.
Some conservatives also claimed that the shortcomings of the response were connected to a focus on diversity at the agency.
A low-key, longtime legislator and coalition-builder, Bass, a 71-year-old Democrat, is now caught between the fires threatening her city and the white-hot spotlight trained on an executive struggling to get a spiraling natural disaster under control.
‘She will be defined by this crisis,’ said Fernando Guerra, founder of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola-Marymount University. ‘She needs to be very proactive, not for the sake of her political career but for the sake of the city.’
The devastation from the Palisades Fire is seen from the air in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of LA
One of the worst blazes has raced through communities entirely outside city limits, showing how dry brush, steep hillsides, high winds and dense neighborhoods can be a lethal combination regardless of the local response.
Experts for decades have warned about the risks of building and living in hillside neighborhoods like Pacific Palisades, the wealthy Los Angeles neighborhood that was largely incinerated in one of the blazes. Los Angeles County officials have not been targeted with such intense criticism.
Bass became more forceful after a series of initial stumbles after returning from Ghana, where she was part of an official White ouse delegation to the inauguration of that country’s president.
Bass was silent while intercepted on camera by a reporter at the airport, asking why she’d been gone and if she had regrets. At an earlier press conference, she read haltingly from prepared remarks, directing people to ‘url’ to find information online.
The mayor left for Africa on January 4, a day after the National Weather Service issued a fire weather watch for Los Angeles, flagging ‘critical fire conditions.’
The day after she left, those watches were upgraded to warnings and on Monday the service warned that a ‘particularly dangerous situation’ was taking shape.
On Thursday Bass said it was too soon to respond to the critics.
‘When the fires are out, we will do a deep dive,’ she said. ‘We will look at what worked, we will look at what didn’t work, and we will let you know. Until then, my focus is on the TV screens behind you that are showing devastation that has continued. Thank you. Answered it in the morning, answered it now, won’t answer it again.’
National Democrats, including President Joe Biden, began to rally around Bass on Friday.
‘I know you’re getting a bad rap,’ the president said to the mayor during an Oval Office meeting with Bass appearing virtually.
‘This is complicated stuff, and you’re going to have a lot of demagogues out there trying to take advantage of it.’
Michael Trujillo, a Los Angeles Democratic strategist, dismissed the immediate criticism of Bass. ‘The test isn’t whether she was here for the fire or not,’ he said. ‘The test is going to be rebuilding.’
The pressure will be immense. Pacific Palisades and the adjoining community of Malibu, which is outside city limits but also suffered severe damage, is home to some of the wealthiest people on the planet, Trujillo noted. They will have no patience for a slow reconstruction, he said.
‘This is basically her entire mayoral legacy,’ Trujillo said.
He dismissed arguments over changes to the fire department budget that he characterized as minor.
Fire Chief Kristin Crowley wrote a memo last month pleading for more funds and complaining a separate $7 million reduction in overtime funds could hamper response to fires.
But since the blazes erupted she’s stressed that the catastrophic nature of the event would have led to significant damage regardless of the budget.
Trujillo said: ‘I don’t care if the fire department had an extra $500 million, I don’t think it would have changed what happened.’
For decades, scientists have warned that the Los Angeles area is due for catastrophic devastation from wildfires. Blazes are part of life in Southern California, but few have ever ripped into the heart of the city like this.
Guerra, who has been active in Los Angeles civic life since the 1980s, said the city is actually lucky.
‘Given what happened, I think that local government has been incredibly responsive,’ Guerra said. ‘LA from 20 years ago would not have been able to manage this.’
