Los Angeles residents are demanding the immediate resignation of Mayor Karen Bass. A petition calling for Hotchkiss to leave the company en masse has drawn 120,000 people “for her gross mismanagement and failure to effectively respond to the devastating 2025 fires in and around the City of Los Angeles.” More signatures were collected.
According to the petition:
Water supplies are severely strained, billions of taxpayer dollars are misallocated or unspent, and countless lives are lost. Families were evacuated, homes destroyed, and livelihoods destroyed, but Mayor Bass chose to stay away from the front lines and travel abroad while his constituents suffered.
overseas bus
About a week ago, apocalyptic fires broke out in Southern California and spread quickly thanks to powerful Santa Ana winds. The inferno destroyed entire neighborhoods, left thousands homeless and killed at least 24 people. But while it is clear that natural winds accelerated the fire and made extinguishing operations extremely difficult, many are beginning to blame misguided leadership for making the tragic event even worse.
Mayor Bass was in Ghana when the Palisades fire broke out. She was there as part of Joe Biden's delegation to celebrate the inauguration of Ghana's president, a move that had no apparent connection to her job as mayor. And when she returned, as Los Angeles lawyer Matt Bilinski put it in The Spectator, “she didn't necessarily inspire confidence.”
She fumbled aloud from a teleprompter at press conferences, remained sullen and silent, and remained glazed over when asked by foreign reporters to explain her trip (and delay in returning home). Ta).
A video of Mr Bass remaining silent when questioned by a Sky News reporter has gone viral.
A responsible leader?
There are two competing narratives surrounding the charge that bad leadership is partially to blame. Advocates argue that Mother Nature should not be denied in this case. It doesn't matter that the fire hydrant is dry. The winds were too strong and the fires were too large and numerous for adequate preparation. Another narrative acknowledges the severity of the fire, but points to examples of incompetence to support the charge that competent leadership could have lessened the destruction.
A senior expert on California's water utilities told independent investigative journalist Michael Shellenberger that the giant reservoir could have been extremely helpful had it not been shut down when the fire broke out.
Santa Ynez Reservoir in the Pacific Palisades was closed for repairs at the time of the fire, NBC News reported. Marty Adams, former general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, told NBC that it's “unlikely to have made much of a difference in the fight against the Palisades fire.”
But Shellenberger's whistleblower doesn't think so. Santa Ynez Reservoir is located uphill from the Palisades Fire. Responding firefighters would have had first access to the 117 million gallons of water, ahead of other firefighters below, likely keeping the water pressure high. The whistleblower said:
117 million gallons is a huge amount of treated water storage available for firefighting efforts. Large scale. It is probably one of the largest treated water storage ponds on the entire West Coast.
response delay
There's also the alleged delay in responding to Los Angeles City Council President Marquise Harris Dawson, the acting mayor who was in charge while Bass was partying in Africa.
Former City Commissioner Eric Spiegelman said Harris-Dawson took too long to declare a state of emergency. Spiegelman said he waited until 5 p.m. Tuesday (December 7). “By that time, the Palisades Fire had been burning for six and a half hours and had already claimed half the neighborhood.”
The former chief said city leaders were unable to preemptively declare a state of emergency despite “several (National Weather Service) warnings of extreme fire danger from Friday through Monday.” said.
The bus left town just as the National Weather Service began ratcheting up warnings about the coming storm, the Los Angeles Times reported. For this reason, Spiegelman continued:
A state of emergency was not declared until Tuesday night, and no federal aid was received until Tuesday night, so Biden didn't drop water from a Navy helicopter until Wednesday.
He concluded by placing the blame at the feet of the bus.
Mr. Marquise has not done anything important as acting mayor without consulting Karen Bass. Keep all this in mind when someone says it didn't matter except that Karen Bass was in Ghana.
On Friday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who initially sought to downplay the fact that the fire hydrants had run out of water, called for an investigation into what happened at the Santa Ynez Reservoir.
Even the New York Times is full of articles. Amy Chozick, a Los Angeles-based screenwriter and executive producer, wrote an op-ed titled “Los Angeles is crushed under the weight of inaction,” highlighting the heroic and capable figures who have been brought to bear amidst this disaster. He expressed his desire to appear.
We are hurting, suffocated by toxic air, and crushed by the weight of inaction. We want people to join us who care more about saving the city than protecting their own careers. You need someone with authority to stand in front of a whiteboard and tell you the plan. I think Arnold Schwarzenegger would show up before the Eaton fire and take over. He told us he would be back. At this point, I'm going to hire Mr. Cuomo.
