Over 20,000 acres in Los Angeles County were set ablaze by wildfires and raging winds causing families to lose their homes and thousands to flee the area for safety. The fire department’s ability to tackle the flames may have been affected by one, controversial, move from L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.
Over the summer, mayor and the City Council revised the budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year which slashed the city’s fire department funding by $17.6 million, according to Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia. City records show for the 2023-2024 fiscal year, the department’s funding was well over $860 million.
However, budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year outlines plans to ensure firefighter recruitment and “support wildfire suppression” including “reimbursable mutual aid sworn overtime.”
Well, that plan certainly didn’t age well. Since last week, weather reports warned of the fires before they spawned in the Pacific Palisades Tuesday. Firefighters expressed concerns of how the budget affected their ability to extinguish the fires.
“Sadly, the winds have been known for over a week, but staffing and budget cuts doesn’t allow to plan and prepare and pre-deploy as we should have,” one LAFD firefighter told FOX 11 News.
“The budget cut that started in July was significant, but the additional millions in ‘requested savings’ will be devastating,” another firefighter said to FOX 11.
Not only did Bass get heat for slashing the fire department’s funds but she also got flack for disappearing as they began — leaving for Ghana over the weekend to attend President John Dramani Mahama’s inauguration, per The Los Angeles Times. Mind you, warnings of the fires started last week.
Bass returned Wednesday to questions of why she went ghost on the city. She responded to the concerns in a press conference, insisting she made arrangements to come home as soon as possible and attributing the extreme weather conditions to months of little rainfall, per The New York Times.
After more than 24 hours, the fires are reported to have swept through over 1,000 homes and caused over 100,000 people to evacuate, the reports say.