Los Angeles fire chief faces calls for resignation

Three years ago, when Kristin Crowley became the first female chief in the history of the Los Angeles Fire Department, she was hailed as a force for stability.

“There is no one better equipped to lead the LAFD at this moment than Kristin,” then-Mayor Eric Garcetti, said by the department’s 22-year veteran. “She is ready to make history.”

Now, as Los Angeles rages under a prolonged onslaught of wind-driven wildfire, its fire chief is beset by challenges inside and outside her ranks, tensions with City Hall and questions about her department’s preparedness. The fires, which are still raging on the city’s west side and in the community of Altadena outside the city, have so far burned nearly 40,000 hectares and claimed at least 27 lives.

Last week, complaints about her department’s funding boiled over into a public dispute between Mayor Karen Bass and Chief Crowley. This week, veteran fire managers charged that she and her staff should have placed more engines ahead of time in high-risk areas like the Pacific Palisades, where the fires began on Jan. 7.

At a news conference, she struggled to explain why an outgoing shift of about 1,000 firefighters was not ordered to remain on the job last Tuesday as a precaution in extreme red flag conditions. “We climbed where we could climb,” she said.

A Jan. 13 letter signed by unnamed “retired and active LAFD chiefs” accused her of a host of management failures and called for her resignation. “A large number of senior officers do not believe you are up to the task,” the five-page letter read in part.

In an email Thursday, a fire department spokesman said the chief was “focused on mitigating the fires” and unable to respond to the letter. The boss has repeatedly emphasized the progress her crews are making.

“Our firefighters are doing an incredible job,” she said in a news briefing Thursday as a continued air and ground assault brought hot spots in Pacific Palisades closer to containment. “As their boss, I am extremely proud of the work that our people did and continue to do.”

With thousands of evacuees clamoring to return to the remains of their homes and several red flag wind conditions in the forecast, many civic leaders in Los Angeles have reserved judgment.

“This was a massive natural disaster that no single fire chief could have prevented, regardless of whether they had unlimited resources and money,” said Corinne Tapia Babcock, a member of the Los Angeles Fire Commission, which oversees the department and its chief. “You can’t attack a single person for a situation this catastrophic.”

Zev Yaroslavsky, a former member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and City Council, said that “a reckoning should and will occur when the smoke clears.”

“But these problems cannot be solved while the city is burning,” he added.

Other civic leaders predicted that sooner or later the chief would be held to account.

“She will be gone in six months,” said Fernando Guerra, who directs the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

Even before the fire, the chief faced strong political challenges, said Dr. War. Her appointment in early 2022 by the former mayor, Mr. Garcetti, was seen as an attempt to stabilize the department after years of harassment and discrimination complaints filed by female LAFD firefighters.

But it challenged the male-dominated culture of the department, Dr. Guerra noted, as did the election later that year of Ms. Bass as the new mayor. Like other top executives in Los Angeles city government, fire chiefs are mayoral appointees and can be replaced by a new administration. Mrs. Bass held her.

Even with more than two decades with the department, Chief Crowley was still new to his position — just beginning to develop a base of support — when the Palisades burst into flames last week.

As the fire turned into a disaster, critics of Mayor Bass, including Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of The Los Angeles Times, and Elon Musk, the owner of X, the social media platform, charged that the fire department had been underfunded. ONE December memo from Chief Crowley appeared, where she warned the Fire Commission that a $7.9 million cut in firefighter overtime and the elimination of dozens of civilian positions had “severely limited” the department’s ability to respond to large-scale emergencies.

Mrs. Bass had approved a budget last June for the fire department’s current fiscal year that was $23 million less than the previous year’s. But a new contract with the firefighters’ union led to raises, and the final fire budget was actually $53 million more than last year’s.

The allegations of underfunding sparked a days-long dispute with the mayor and her allies. By the end of last week, Chief Crowley had doubled down and told a local Fox News affiliate that she felt that the city government had failed the fire department.

Within hours, she and Ms. Bass — herself under fire for being out of the country when the Palisades fire started — disappeared into the mayor’s office long enough to miss an evening news briefing. Behind closed doors, the mayor’s staff repeatedly denied wrongdoing report from a British news outlet that the boss had been fired.

On Saturday morning, the mayor and chief projected a united front, although the tension was evident. “The chief and I are locked,” said Ms. Bass. “And if there are differences that we have, we will continue to deal with them privately.”

But the criticism of the boss flared up again this week in the middle reports in the Los Angeles Times that the firefighting force on duty when the Palisades fire started could have been much larger. In previous years, the department often paid outgoing shifts overtime to stay on the job during times of alarming wind forecasts and tinder-dry conditions.

Internal documents reviewed by The New York Times also showed that the department’s plan on the day of the fire called for the pre-positioning of only nine additional fire trucks — near Hollywood, the Santa Monica Mountains and elsewhere in the San Fernando Valley — but none in the Pacific Palisades.

Patrick Butler, a former LAFD assistant chief who is now chief of the Redondo Beach, Calif., fire department, said placing firefighters and equipment near fire zones in significant numbers well in advance during periods of high wildfire danger has long been a key strategy in the department. “It is beyond me how this happened other than extreme incompetence and no understanding of fire operations,” he said.

Others said the fire chief should have kept both the incoming and outgoing shifts of firefighters on duty before the fire as a precaution.

“I can’t say why she didn’t exercise it, but it’s a known tactic and it would have doubled the manpower,” said Rick Crawford, a former LAFD battalion commander who is now the emergency and crisis management coordinator for the US Capitol. “I’m not saying that it would have prevented the fire or that the fire would not have gotten out of control. But she lost a strategic advantage by not telling the outgoing shift, ‘You must stay and work’.”

In the letter, reportedly signed by current and retired officers in the department, there were complaints that Chief Crowley had also failed to temporarily recall experienced fire commanders who had recently retired.

“While no one is saying this fire could have been stopped, there is no doubt among all of us that if you had done the right thing and prepared the LAFD for an incident of this magnitude, deaths would have been reduced and property would have been saved,” they wrote.

Sharon Delugach, a member of the Los Angeles Fire Commission, said rumors of discontent within the department had been on the radar but had not come to the commission’s formal attention before the fires broke out.

Some of the criticism, she said, could reflect feelings of sexism or homophobia — Chief Crowley is the first lesbian to lead the department — or come from those unhappy with changes.

Regardless of the source, Ms. Delugach said, the timing of the latest dissent is not ideal when many outside the department appear intent on scoring political points.

“I’m sure they have very legitimate concerns, and I’m sure everyone in the department is there for the right reason,” Delugach said of the internal criticism. “It’s a shame that all this dirty laundry is being aired at the moment of the fire.”

Mrs. Delugach predicted that Chief Crowley’s future would depend less on internal and external criticism than on her relationship with Ms. Bass.

“It’s whether she and the mayor can work together, that’s the real question,” Ms. Delugach said. “I hope they can.”

Rachel Nostrant, Nicholas Bogel-BurroughsKate Selig and Katie Benner contributed with reporting.