Los Angeles firefighters have broken ranks to tear into Mayor Karen Bass over the disastrous state of the department across the city.
Officers revealed to the California Post they are trapped in marathon shifts, missing paychecks and going through hell while its budget flatlines despite rising risks of wildfires.
They warned response times are climbing and emergency callouts are exploding but City Hall was refusing to pump in desperately needed cash.
Fire crews are now pooling together more than $1 million of their own cash to push for a sales tax measure they claim would cover just the basics to keep the department running.
Rich Ramirez, vice president of UFLAC Local 112 and a firefighter paramedic, told The Post: “We don’t have relief. We can’t just shut something down and tell residents no one is coming. So you stay.
“You can go from doing CPR on a child to a traffic crash, cutting someone out of a car, then straight to a drowning. That all happens in a single 24-hour shift.”
Firefighters describe 48-hour tours that spiral longer, with mandated overtime keeping some on duty up to 120 hours in high-intensity conditions.
Doug Coates, president of UFLAC Local 112 and a firefighter engineer, continued: “You think you’re going home, and they tell you you’re staying. You miss birthdays, you miss your family.”
Even as overtime piles up, some firefighters say they are still fighting just to be paid, with missed checks and delayed wages adding up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for crew members.
“We’ve filed grievances, gone to arbitration, and now we’re in lawsuits,” Ramirez said. “People are owed thousands of dollars. This is regular pay.”
Coates said the payroll problems have dragged on for years. He said: “The worst thing you can do is not pay your firefighters correctly. And that’s happening.”
When the city released its 2026–27 budget last month, it delivered little relief for a department already stretched to its limits.
In 1960, Los Angeles had about 2.5 million residents. Today, the population is approaching four million.
Over that same period, the fire department has barely grown. In 1965, there were 3,379 firefighter positions. Today, there are about 3,387. An increase of just eight firefighters over six decades.
Demand has exploded in the opposite direction. Annual emergency calls have climbed from roughly 100,000 in the 1960s to nearly 500,000 in 2025.
“We’re running five times the calls with basically the same staffing,” Ramirez said.
The system’s footprint has also shrunk. LA operated 112 fire stations in 1960. Today, there are 106. More than half are aged over 50 and several are more than 80.
Response times are slipping under that weight. National standards call for crews to arrive within about four minutes 90 percent of the time.
In Los Angeles, the average response time has stretched to roughly 7 minutes and 53 seconds.
Inside dispatch, firefighters say the consequences are visible in real time. Screens turn red when no units are available within the recommended window, a condition they say is no longer rare.
“That means there’s nobody to send,” Ramirez said. When that happens, crews are pulled from farther away, leaving entire neighborhoods exposed and pushing response times even higher.
“It’s a domino effect,” Coates said. “You’re covering one area, and another area is left without coverage.”
Union leaders say fixing the gap would require a fundamental rebuild: dozens of additional dispatchers, more battalions, expanded emergency medical infrastructure, roughly 62 new fire stations and thousands of additional firefighters.
By population benchmarks, they estimate Los Angeles should have more than 7,300 firefighters. Instead, the city is operating at roughly half that level.
Despite those conditions, firefighters say the latest budget does little to change the trajectory, even in the aftermath of a major wildfire season that exposed the system’s limits.
“It’s not sustainable,” Ramirez said. That’s why firefighters are now taking their case directly to voters, framing it as a last-ditch effort to stabilize the department.
A proposed half-cent sales tax is expected to generate about $324 million in its first year, with provisions designed to lock the funding into fire department operations.
The measure includes a dedicated fund, a requirement that the city maintain its current level of fire funding, annual public audits and citizen oversight.
Firefighters say those guardrails are meant to rebuild trust after years of spending elsewhere that has done little to ease the pressure on the front lines.
“This doesn’t fix everything,” Coates said. “This just helps us start catching up.”
A spokesman for Bass told the California Post that “These issues have been decades in the making.”
He said when Bass took office she increased the LAFD’s budget each year, raised firefighter salaries and led investments in technology and equipment.
He added: “As Los Angeles continues to grow, Mayor Bass believes the fire department must grow with it — which is why she immediately came out in support of the sales tax measure.
“The Mayor’s Office worked alongside the LAFD to identify an effective investment strategy for the department should the measure pass.”