On Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council voted to deny former LAFD Chief Kristin Crowley’s appeal after she was fired by Mayor Karen Bass last month.
It was a 13-to-2 vote with councilmembers Monica Rodriguez and Traci Park voting in favor of Crowley.
During her speech to the City Council, Crowley said Bass made false claims about her, including that she refused to hold 1,000 firefighters as the firefight was kind of looming because the windstorm was bearing down on Los Angeles.
“As for the 1,000 firefighters who allegedly were sent home prior to the fires, we did not have enough apparatus to put them on,” she said. “Because of the budget cuts and lack of investments in our fleet maintenance, over 100 of our fire engines, fire trucks, and ambulances sat broken down in our maintenance yards, unable to be used to help during one of the worst wildfire events in our history. It is also a false allegation that we failed to notify the mayor's office about the upcoming weather event.”
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Crowley also said she did not refuse to do an after-action report on the Palisades Fire. Rodriguez backed Crowley on that.
“You can't participate in an after-action report when you haven't even funded it yet,” she said.
Park, whose district includes the Palisades, said as far as she's concerned, there's probably several city departments that bear blame for wrongdoing or mishaps.
“We also deserve to know why the Palisades's evacuations turned into chaos and gridlock in addition to why America's second largest city didn't have water in our fire hydrants to respond to an emergency,” she said. “We deserve to know why our critical water infrastructure necessary to protect our neighborhood was kept offline for a year.”
Councilmember Tim McOsker, who voted against Crowley, said he needed a mayor and a fire chief who could work together.
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