Separating Wildfire Fact from Fiction After the L.A. Mayoral Debate
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass shared a tense back-and-forth with mayoral challenger Spencer Pratt during a debate on Wednesday night, as Pratt, a Republican who lost his home in the Palisades Fire, called out the incumbent’s handling of the disaster and dubbed her “an incredible liar.”
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Bass predictably downplayed her responsibility for the city’s response, casting the fires as a freak occurrence that could not have been prevented, despite significant evidence to the contrary. Pratt, for his part, laid into the mayor with righteous fury over her administration’s failure to contain the damage, but bent the truth in certain spots.
What Did Bass Know When She Left for Ghana?
Bass called the fire “horrible” and said it was one of the “worst moments of my life to not be here when my city needed me.”
“To me, it reminds me of like, if you’re away and a family member is in an accident,” she added, implying that the she had no way to predict that a fire might break out while she was away.
Bass left L.A. for Ghana on January 4, 2025, to attend the inauguration of President John Dramani Mahama as part of a presidential delegation.
But the makings of a natural disaster were already in place by the time Bass boarded her departing flight. On January 2, 2025, the National Interagency Fire Center issued a warning for “above normal significant fire potential” in Southern California.
And on January 3, the National Weather Service issued a “red flag warning” for Los Angeles and Ventura counties, describing the weather event as a “particularly dangerous situation” due to anticipated strong winds and low humidity.
Prosecutors allege suspected arsonist Jonathan Rinderknecht started a fire on January 1, 2025, that burned undetected deep in root systems before flaring back up on January 7, 2025. Rinderknecht, who will stand trial next month, has pleaded not guilty to charges related to sparking the fire that would ultimately become one of the most destructive wildfires in California history, killing twelve people and causing billions of dollars in property damage.
Lack of Preparation
At the debate, Pratt accused Bass’s administration of being ill-prepared before the fire. He suggested he would have reduced dry bush and would never have allowed the Santa Ynez Reservoir to be drained and closed for maintenance due to a torn cover.
Bass, for her part, claimed that the reservoir is only for drinking water. However, officials from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) said that if the reservoir had been operational, it might have increased the supply of water, though it’s unclear what the ultimate effect might have been, the BBC previously reported.
As the blaze burned last year, California Governor Gavin Newsom confirmed that some fire hydrants had run dry, complicating the emergency response efforts. At the time, Newsom called for an independent investigation into the loss of water pressure to hydrants and “the reported unavailability of water supplies from the Santa Ynez Reservoir.”
The city’s water managers had floated a plan seven months earlier to revive an old reservoir that had shuttered in 2013 to temporarily increase the area’s limited water capacity, according to the New York Times, but that plan never came to fruition. While crews spent days cleaning the Pacific Palisades Reservoir in early June 2024, the project was never completed because the city determined that opening the defunct reservoir could have posed a risk to workers and residents of nearby homes because of structural and other safety issues, the report found.
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Bass also said that extreme winds prevented air support from dropping water on the flames. Pratt countered that winds in Pacific Palisades never reached more than 40 mph.
“You are inaccurate,” Bass said.
“You are an incredible liar,” Pratt replied.
Wind speeds did, in fact, reach 86 mph during the fire, according to a from the Los Angeles Fire Department, but sustained winds appeared to be much lower.
Fire Department Budget
Moderator Conan Nolan also pressed Bass, noting she “prioritized wages and benefits, a hike in the salaries of the firefighters union, over the operations budget.”
“We saw those pictures of those engines that were inoperable because they didn’t have enough mechanics to fix them,” he added. “Was that a mistake?”
Bass defended herself: “The primary problem there was that the chief sent home 1,000 firefighters. We actually had fire trucks with not enough firefighters there. So, yes, there were fire trucks that were broken — but there were also fire trucks that were out of use because she had sent the firefighters home.”
The LAFD’s after action report notes the department “maintains a fleet of reserve apparatus (trucks, engines, and ambulances) to be placed into relief for front-line apparatus that are in need of repair.”
When the fire broke out on January 7, the LAFD Supply and Maintenance Division (S&M) reported that a total of 40 engines were in the S&M repair yard and were unavailable due to mechanical issues.
“The reserve fleet of engines has significantly diminished over the past decade due to a decline in civilian mechanic staffing, an increase in mechanical issues related to the degradation of heavy apparatus caused by call volume, costs associated with apparatus, the build time of apparatus, and delays in service parts at S&M,” the report adds.
Bass has faced criticism over $17.6 million in cuts to the LAFD’s budget made in the year before the fire, with then-L.A. Fire Chief Kristin Crowley telling CNN that the cuts had “severely” affected the department’s ability to respond to the disaster. Crowley has said the department was already under-staffed. However, the Los Angeles Times previously reported that the city council approved $53 million in pay raises for firefighters and $58 million for new kit, such as fire trucks, after the 2024–25 budget was passed, which actually effectively grew the department’s operating budget by 7 percent.
While Crowley has sued the city, accusing Bass and other officials of trying to ruin her reputation and blame her for the fire, a Los Angeles Times investigation revealed top L.A. fire commanders did, in fact, decide not to assign roughly 1,000 available firefighters and dozens of water-carrying engines for emergency deployment in advance of the fire.
Fire officials chose not to order the firefighters to remain on duty for a second shift as the dangerous winds were building — which would have doubled the personnel on hand, according to the report. The department also could have sent at least ten more fire engines to Pacific Palisades before the fire — engines that could have been on patrol along the hillsides and canyons. Had those engines been in place, crews may have spotted the fire soon after it started, when it was still small enough to give them a chance to control it, former officials told the paper.
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