Six weeks after the start of the most destructive wildfire in the L.A. history, Mayor Bass fired former LAFD Chief Kirstin Crowley. Tuesday morning, Crowley took her dismissal to the City Council, arguing she was ousted on “false allegations”.
“My hopes today are to make sure that everybody knows within the city what our firefighters need to do their jobs, to be supported, to be safe, so that they can go home to their families in the morning,” Crowley said before the hearing.
The city’s firefighters were among her most vocal supporters at the hearing, including Chuong Ho, director at United Firefighters of Los Angeles City. He said the firefighting community of L.A. is disappointed by Mayor Bass’ actions and that the termination was unwarranted.
“For the first time, we’ve had a fire chief who speaks up and speaks out and says, ‘Hey, this fire department is understaffed. It’s under-resourced, and we can go no more. We are going to break at some point.’ And when she and when we get a fire chief that finally speaks up, she’s terminated,” he said.
Ho, on behalf of the union, claimed that Crowley was used as a scapegoat by the mayor; Bass has herself faced criticism for her response to the deadly and destructive wildfires.
The mayor’s office had alleged three reasons for terminating the fire chief: choosing not to deploy an additional 1,000 firefighters on the day the blaze ignited; failing to warn the mayor of dangerous wind conditions; and rebuffing a request to prepare a report investigating what happened during the fires and why.
Ho said the allegations are untrue: “The first reason, there was no place to put 1000 firefighters the morning of the fires, we don’t have enough trucks, we don’t have enough engines. Second, I think everybody in the country knew about the dangerous wind conditions. And then third, there is an after action report, a comprehensive after action report that’s being conducted right now,” he said. “It’s going to take time to complete, because of the volume, the large scale incident that we had, we can’t just complete it overnight.”
Nonetheless, Mayor Bass won today: Crowley needed at least 10 of 15 council votes to reverse the decision. She received two.
“I‘m going to continue to work hard for the city as an assistant chief, I think there’s more for us to do. I think there’s a lot more contributions,” Crowley said. “No matter what seat I’m in, we hold our heads up high and that we’re doing the right thing for the right people.”