Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has been accused of masterminding the city’s media response after the catastrophic Palisades fire.
The revelation, in The Los Angeles Times, comes after The California Post revealed a damning after-action review was significantly modified from the draft to the final public report.
Now Bass has been accused of orchestrating how the Los Angeles Fire Department responded to public questions about the fire.
In one instance, an LAFD aide advised the mayor’s office that more interviews with the fire chief “could invite a high volume of challenging questions” and would be “contingent on the Mayor’s direction.”
A Bass aide told the LA Times that Bass customarily has a hand in every city department.
“From Animal Services to the Zoo, the Mayor’s Office is in contact with every city department on issues large and small, and so obviously and appropriately the Mayor’s Office engaged with LAFD about the rollout of the report,” aide Yusef Robb told the LA Times.
“What did not happen is the illogical and false assertion that the Mayor sought to soften critiques in a report that she herself demanded and on issues of which she has been publicly critical for more than a year,” Robb added.
The California Post obtained the first draft of the Palisades After-Action Fire Report, which painted a harsher and honest story around the horrific fire.
At 92 pages, the original Palisades After-Action Review was 22 pages longer than the final version released in January, with chapter titles changed and contentious terms such as “wind” removed.
Notably, the executive summary of the draft states the report was prepared at the behest of the mayor’s office. That reference is removed entirely from the final document.
One of the most damning edits involves language acknowledging insufficient resources to “suppress a wind-driven vegetation fire,” with the department attempting to be “fiscally responsible by not fully augmenting and pre-deploying all available resources in preparation for a rare wind event.”
By contrast, the final report claims the LAFD ”balanced fiscal responsibility with proper preparation by following its pre-deployment matrix.”