A new low in the Palisades Fire fallout — fighting – Latest News
The women and men of the LA Fire Department (LAFD) are so determined for the tools they need to do their jobs that they’re reaching into their own pockets to fund a gross sales tax measure they are saying is the solely strategy to shield the communities they love.
They have been underfunded and understaffed on the eve of the Pacific Palisades fire final yr, with vehicles out of commission as a result of upkeep and firefighters advised to stand down as a result of the metropolis didn’t wish to pay additional time.
Now, Freddy Escobar, the president of the firefighters’ union, has filed a defamation lawsuit towards Mayor Karen Bass claiming her workplace carried out a smear marketing campaign to stifle critics of the metropolis’s response to the fire.
More than 57,000 acres have been destroyed by the Palisades and Eaton fires in January 2025. Getty Images
Escobar has publicly contradicted the metropolis’s official narrative of who’s at fault for the catastrophe, and his lawsuit alleges the mayor retaliated by directing her employees to leak damaging however discredited tales about him to the press.
Escobar’s allegations actually match the broader conduct of the Bass administration, which has relentlessly prioritized minimizing the metropolis’s legal legal responsibility and salvaging the mayor’s re-election bid over assembly primary obligations for transparency and accountability.
Their beef began shortly after the fire, when Bass sacked LA Fire Department Chief Kirstin Crowley. Escobar denounced the transfer as a flashy public sacrifice meant to obscure Crowley’s complaints about systemic under-investment in her division.
Crowley had a level. Since the Nineteen Sixties, the population of Los Angeles has jumped from 2.5 million residents to almost 4 million. Meanwhile, the metropolis’s firefighting core has expanded by a complete of eight positions. Yes, simply eight: from 3,379 in 1965 to three,387 in the present day.
And the complete quantity of firefighter stations has truly decreased, falling from 112 to only 106.
Former Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley is hugged by a firefighter as her spouse, Hollyn Bullock, left, watches after Los Angeles City Council members voted 13-2 to disclaim former Chief Crowley’s appeal at Los Angeles City Hall in Los Angeles Tuesday, March 4, 2025. Los Angeles Times by way of Getty Images
Then the Mayor made some light “refinements” to the metropolis’s official “after action” report that simply so occurred to clean away mentions of continual underfunding and funnel all the failures down to frontline firefighters. Escobar went on report disputing the edits and stating that the union member who initially authored the report, Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, had truly eliminated his identify from the last model.
Bass doesn’t seem to have met these criticisms with a “growth” mindset. In a heated closed-door confrontation she allegedly requested Escobar: “When are you going to stop?” And when he didn’t, she allegedly responded by launching a marketing campaign to destroy his status.
My mother misplaced her home in the fires. And that is precisely the PR playbook she and the relaxation of the Pali victims have suffered by since: obscure, discredit, and stonewall.
Or, merely flee. Just have a look at the destiny of Janisse Quiñones, who was working the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) the day of the fire.
LADWP is now going through a lawsuit claiming it did not de-energize the Palisades energy strains, a normal industry apply to forestall new sparks and keep firefighters secure.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass chats with California Governor Gavin Newsom whereas surveying injury during the Palisades Fire on Wednesday, January 8, 2025. MediaNews Group by way of Getty Images
A particular set of strains in an space referred to as the Highlands seems to have collapsed late on the first day of the inferno and allegedly induced a new fire that burned down a number of blocks of properties which may have in any other case survived.
It’s nonetheless not clear what truly occurred, and there was no transparency, or accountability.
Quiñones additionally oversaw the Santa Ynez reservoir, the now-infamous monument to catastrophic municipal mismanagement particularly constructed to “increase fire protection” that was empty the day of the fire.
Quiñones — backed by Bass — has met the public outrage with blithe dismal. She did ultimately direct her engineers to fill the reservoir, although they rapidly stopped after noticing rips in its cowl — the very same downside that induced them to empty it the first time — and Santa Ynez nonetheless sits empty.
Quiñones’ response to this mounting public stress has been to depart: she just lately resigned to take a comfortable job in Puerto Rico. Mayor Bass’s official press release praised her “steady leadership and engineering expertise.”
This monitor report is why many residents are treating Spencer Pratt’s mayoral candidacy as more than a superstar sideshow. They’re working on the very same logic that powered one other actuality TV star to a historic electoral upset: the established order is so dangerous, the political institution so sclerotic, the prices of incompetence so extreme, that it is perhaps value taking a likelihood on a disruptive outsider.
It’s arduous to say they’re mistaken.
Rob Montz is CEO of Good Kid Productions and the director of “The Untold Story of the Palisades Fire.”
