[Updated] The combination of Black Woman, Democrat, and a veteran public official is irresistible to many...
Scapegoating a Mayor as The Biggest Fire in LA Rages?
** An update was appended to the end of this piece.
First, some facts:
We don’t know the exact cause of the fires - not yet
There are reports, some well-documented, of electrical faults before the start of the first fires
We do know that there is not one fire department in the country that is equipped to handle this magnitude of disaster
The weather conditions absolutely have been interfering with firefighting efforts and will continue to interfere as contained areas will rekindle as winds kick up
The president-elect began attacking Democratic California officials as soon as word of the fires hit the news wires
Some clues as to what happened?
From Patch.com for Orange County
Electrical Faults Surged Before LA Wildfires Erupted: Reports
The number of faults on the power grid increased in the wildfire areas hours before flames decimated LA County, reports say.
Just hours before the most devastating wildfires in Los Angeles County history began, the number of faults on the power grid in the impacted areas spiked, according to a company that monitors electrical activity. Additionally, a San Gabriel Valley couple has come forward with photos of an electrical tower erupting in flames in what they claim is the start of the Eaton Fire.
It was announced today that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms will be conducting an investigation as to the origins of the fires in Los Angeles.
The piling onto Mayor Karen Bass started on the very first day of the Pacific Palisades fire in Los Angeles.
Just imagine! Bass had the unmitigated nerve to travel to West Africa the Saturday before. She failed everyone by not divining that the biggest, most damaging, fire emergency ever to befall Los Angeles would begin in her absence.
Just imagine! Karen Bass absolutely let down her constituents, two years into her term as mayor, by failing to fix 100 years of neglect and an aging infrastructure that was never planned or put in place to adequately meet the needs of a climate crisis-addled city in this day and age. It doesn’t matter that there have been four mayors since Tom Bradley left office in 1993 after twenty years in office, each serving an average of seven years, with her immediate predecessor, Eric Garcetti, being the longest-serving at nine and a half years, and during an era in which it has been more than apparent where climate change is headed. But… She’s been there for two years now, why, oh, why, hasn’t she magically fixed things yet?
Trip to Ghana
Sky News’ senior Northern Ireland reporter, David Blevins, cornered Karen Bass upon her return from a diplomatic mission to Ghana.
The first question out of his mouth was:
“Do you owe citizens an apology for being absent while their homes were burning?”
Had I been in her place, given the same setting, I am doubtful I would have kept my anger in check or held back. The woman just got off a plane. Apologize for… starting a fire? Not being there to personally put it out? What other mayor has been asked this kind of question in similar circumstances? Was Rudy Giuliani asked to apologize for anything that happened during or after 9-11?
Diplomatic missions are scheduled months in advance, if not longer. Should weather forecasts of very high wind advisories and risk of fire have nixed her trip? How about the risk of electrical faults? Would you decide not to go to work under such circumstances? Most people went to work the day the fire started. They sent their kids to school. Everyone went about their business.
A mayor’s office, especially in Los Angeles, is well-staffed. There are people there who are assigned acting authorities and duties when the boss is out of town. There are heads of departments, department chiefs, city council members, etc. Mayor Bass was not derelict in her duties.
She flew to Ghana on Saturday and cut her trip short on Monday. She flew on a military plane so that she could be in constant communication with staff and department chiefs.
But then… LAFD Fire Chief, Kristin Crowley, decided to speak up…
Needless to say, this interview went viral in swift order. If you search YouTube or Google for “Kristin Crowley interview,” you will see that Crowley gave a significant number of interviews of varying lengths to many news outlets right in the middle of managing what will be deemed the worst ever fire in Los Angeles history… to complain about budget cuts, the lack of resources at her disposal, and how they’re affecting the performance of her department.
California has a statewide agency called CalFire.
From their “What We Do” web page:
“Safeguarding California through fire prevention and protection, emergency response, and stewardship of natural resource systems”
Initial Attack
Our Fire Protection services operate throughout the State with responsibility for over 31 million acres of California's privately-owned wildlands. Initial attack aircraft can reach even the most remote corners of California within 20 minutes, with the goal of keeping 95% of fires contained at 10 acres or less.
Needless to say, CalFire was involved from the get-go.
So was Governor Newsom.
But I digress… Once the damage was done, Fire Chief Kristin Crowley gave an additional interview, this time, to CNN’s Jake Tapper in which she cleaned up a bit, explaining her beefs with City Hall, and forcefully added provisos to some of her accusations:
After her arrival home, Mayor Bass answered questions:
Budget cuts
Had the 18 million dollars in cuts not been made, LAFD would STILL have had an impossible task, even with an additional 100 vehicles repaired and available at the start of the fire.
This video, of actor Steve Guttenberg, railing against residents who left their locked cars in the middle of the only way in or out of the village, preventing fleeing residents from leaving safely, gives you an idea of why there were unnecessary delays that had nothing to do with the LAFD budget or Karen Bass.
What eventually freed the flow of traffic from ditched vehicles was this:
Dealing with the fallout of Crowley’s commentary
Mayor Bass had several chats with the fire chief subsequent to the chief’s interviews. Contrary to social media reports, Mayor Bass did not fire the chief. Instead, Bass used the chats with Crowley to establish a protocol. Chief Crowley addressed how messaging will work from here on out at the January 11th morning press conference:
Dealing with major fires
Dealing with a fire of the magnitude we are facing now goes beyond the capacity of a local fire department - even one as big as the second largest city’s department in the nation.
California has a mutual aid arrangement across the state. Hundreds of firefighters have been brought in from all corners of the state and from neighboring states who participate in a Western state mutual aid arrangement. That aid is coordinated through CalFire.
Then, you have the coordination of air power, especially in this case where more than one very large fire is involved and a massive number of aircraft, fixed and rotary wing need coordination. Col. Cedric Leighton (AF, Ret.) explains here:
Direct aid for the displaced
Disaster declarations went out very shortly after the fire began. President Biden happened to be in Los Angeles and Governor Newsom wasted no time getting declarations and requests for assistance in front of Biden. Other than a local declaration, there isn’t much more Karen Bass would have been able to do on her own if she had not traveled to Ghana. Newsom stepped in literally a couple of hours into the crisis.
Evacuation centers have been in place from day one, and more have been added as the fires expanded greatly.
At the time of writing, about 100,000 people are believed to be displaced.
Safety
Over the last five days, increasing numbers of National Guard have been called in. Their number now is in the thousands. It takes time to get the Guard called up and in place.
There were incidences of looting. Arrests were made and a curfew is now in place with the appropriate number of personnel to enforce it. This is both the purview of the Sheriff’s Department and the National Guard. The former is independent from City Hall and the latter is the purview of the Governor’s office. Again, nothing there for Karen Bass to do or be blamed for.
Insurance and housing
California has been facing a homeowner and car insurance crisis since last year, when State Farm made some significant changes to how it operates in the state:
More recently, State Farm dropped 1600 policy holders in Pacific Palisades just this past July.
Insurance is going to as be a huge problem in California and other fire-prone states as it is in Florida and other states prone to weather-related disasters (La, Tx).
The shortage of housing in California has been at crisis levels for years, made far worse by the COVID pandemic work stoppage, and now with thousands of homes having gone up in flames in one fell swoop, we are about to enter a desperate situation where both low and high income earners can’t find housing. Resources for additional housing will have to come from both the state and the feds. Resources to help homeowners who were left without insurance will also have to be covered from government funding.
Karen Bass has had a long career in government and is well-versed in many aspects of the funding procurement process. That experience will be very useful in the months ahead. Bass was a California state legislator and rose to the ranks of Speaker. She is well-versed in how the system works and is politically well connected. Bass was also a member of Congress, representing the Los Angeles congressional district. She knows what’s been allocated to the area. That, too, will be very handy.
For the things that require a different skill set, she will need to get the advice of management consultants and others on how to begin a process of reform of such institutions as Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), which has been a mess for a very long time and, of course, the fire department. Both agencies need top to bottom reform. Simply re-equipping them won’t do. Neither will adding personnel.
This is an issue that should have been dealt with at the state level and not the local level. We’ve had several major fires in the last few years, including a horrible one during the first Trump administration.
We’ve long known what’s coming and haven’t done enough to get ready. Putting power lines under the ground is a state-federal level partnership type of project. California needed to get with it in a far more accelerated manner. The Paradise fire in 2018 should have been the clarion call. Trump was in office then and will, again, be in office now. He was never too fond of Gavin Newsom to begin with. He is even less so now. Will he be inclined to sign off on a big package to beef up California’s fire infrastructure or will he continue to spew nonsense about imaginary water that Democrats are preventing from flowing from an imaginary reservoir? Will Trump be inclined to render aid or will he, instead, engage in retribution?
Gavin Newsom is being proactive in fighting disinformation and misinformation. There is now a new website that fact-checks fire disinformation on social media and elsewhere.
Clearing out the dry brush that is everywhere in the state should be its own department, with adequate personnel (even prison inmates at competitive pay rates) to do the daily clearing of brush and dying trees all over the state.
Half-jokingly, I would recommend hiring soon to be former Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, who at one time worked at McKinsey and Company. He has an impressive track record as a manager and planner. He is definitely talented enough to tackle the huge task of getting real reforms planned and then presented to the legislature for enactment.
Whomever ends up doing the work of planning and implementation, it won’t be Mayor Bass. This is not city level stuff. Sure, there is plenty what to reform at the city level and she needs more than ever to do more while dealing with the day to day obligations in a time of crisis. That would be the case no matter who is mayor.
The attacks against Karen Bass are not only unjustified, if only because the fire is ongoing, but are tainted by the usual ugly trio of classism, sexism, and racist Magical Negro tropes against an accomplished Black woman.
Elections have consequences. This phrase has been used an awful lot by an awful lot of people over the last four years and especially right before the election. Too many people chose to ignore the phrase and refrained from even imagining what the consequence would be for not participating in an election that followed an attempt at insurrection.
Here we are…
UPDATE:
Governor Gavin Newsom gave CNN’s Kyung La an important interview:
The term “Magical Negro” was coined by film director, Spike Lee in 2001
The American Society of Magical Negroes trailer