Los Angeles mayoral hopeful Spencer Pratt has revealed he was tipped off by fire department insiders about the Palisades fire report being watered down by Mayor Karen Bass’s office.
The former MTV reality star said LAFD insiders told him in October that key findings were scrubbed or tempered in the official report to downplay failures made by the LAFD the inferno erupted.
Mayor Bass has been accused of watering down the report’s findings to shield the city from legal liability, even withholding the working draft until her own self-serving tweaks were made to the report, the Los Angeles Times reported
Pratt claimed that there was nine versions of the after-action report after Bass demanded changes.
“This lady cannot be mayor,” the former MTV reality star raged from the ruins of his own Palisades home on Thursday,
“There’s no moving forward until we get the answers and the people responsible are fired, and that includes the fire chiefs, the fire battalion chiefs, that includes the mayor, it includes anybody that had anything to do with this.”
LA Fire Chief Jaime Moore revealed this month that “multiple drafts” of the report were edited to soften language and tone down criticism of the fire department in the final version.
Pratt and Moore did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
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The October analysis omitted a section revealing the LAFD didn’t fully staff or pre-deploy crews amid forecasted catastrophic winds – because it didn’t align with city policy, the LA Times reported.
The report instead praised department brass for going “above and beyond” with a standard “pre-deployment matrix,” despite the blaze destroying 16,000 homes and structures, killing 12 people and causing $150 billion in damages.
“Karen Bass actively covered up a report meant to examine the most significant disaster in Los Angeles history,” Rick Caruso, who was mulling a mayoral run in the City of Angels, fumed on X.
“When it comes to life safety matters, this is no longer a matter of making poor judgement, apologizing and moving forward. This is a complete loss of public trust and an intentional act of covering up the actions that led to people dying. She has completely failed us.
Bass, who has already been heavily securitized over her botched handling of the Palisades Fire, has repeatedly denied claims she altered the fire analysis.
“Mayor Bass has been unequivocal for months — she reviewed an early draft of the report and only asked the LAFD to make sure it was accurate on issues like weather and budget,” her office said Wednesday.
“There is absolutely no reason why she would request those details be altered or erased when she herself has been critical of the response to the fire — full stop. She has said this for months.”
