The City of Los Angeles has failed its people, Fire Department chief Kristin Crowley said on Friday, as deadly fires rage across the region.
More than 35,000 acres have burned in the Palisades, Eaton, Hurst, and Kenneth blazes, and at least ten people have died as a result of the fires. State and local officials are beginning to investigate why and how firefighters ran out of water when fighting the flames, after the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday that firefighting efforts in the area were weakened by low water pressure and dry fire hydrants.
Speaking to Fox affiliate KKTV, Crowley praised the department’s firefighters for acting without adequate resources and said that she was unaware prior to the fire’s start that a large Pacific Palisades reservoir, which could have held 117 million gallons of water, was empty.
“When a firefighter comes up to a hydrant, we expect there’s going to be water. We don’t control the water supply; our firefighters are there to protect lives and property and to make sure that we’re properly trained and equipped,” Crowley said. “That’s my position on this. If there’s no water, I don’t know how the water gets to the hydrants, please defer that [question] to [the L.A. Department of Water and Power (DWP)], or whomever controls that.”
When asked if the City of Los Angeles had failed the department and its citizens, Crowley responded: “Yes.”
California governor Gavin Newsom announced the launch of an independent investigation into the L.A. DWP. “We need answers to how that happened,” Newsom told DWP officials in a letter on Friday.
A $17.6 million budget cut, passed last year, also hindered the fire department’s ability to respond, Crowley said.
“Any budget cut is going to impact our ability to provide service,” Crowley said. “That is a ground truth in regard to our ability. If there’s a budget cut, we had to pull from somewhere else. What does that mean? That doesn’t get done or that there are delays.”
“Since Day One, we’ve identified huge gaps in regard to our service delivery and our ability of our firefighters’ boots on the ground to do their jobs,” she continued. “This is my third budget as we’re going into 2025–2026, and what I can tell you is we are still understaffed, we’re still under-resourced and we’re still underfunded.”
During a press conference on Thursday, mayor Karen Bass said that the budget cuts did not “impact” the current situation that firefighters face.
“I think if you go back and look at the reductions that were made, there were no reductions that were made that would have impacted the situation that we were dealing with over the last couple of days,” she said. “And then there was a little bit of confusion because money was allocated to be distributed later on, which was actually going to support salaries and other parts of the fire department that were distributed a little later.”
“So I think it’s most important to understand that we were in tough budgetary times. Everybody knew that. But that impact of our budget really did not impact what we’ve been going through over the last few days,” Bass added.
Crowley’s recent comments mirror ones she had made in December, when the budget cuts were passed. At the time, Crowley said the cuts “have adversely affected the Department’s ability to maintain core operations” and “severely limited the Department’s capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies.”