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Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass cut the Los Angeles Fire Department's budget by $18 million; a memo obtained by @NBCLA written by the LA Fire Chief warned Mayor Bass that those cuts would impact responses to large-scale emergencies. https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/california-wildfires/la-widlfires-budget-cuts-palisades-fire/3598438/
Video Transcript AI Summary
The LA City Fire Department is facing significant operational challenges due to a $17.6 million budget cut, including a $7 million reduction in overtime. This has impacted their ability to prepare for and respond to large-scale emergencies, particularly wildfires. The fire chief's memo highlighted that the cuts have jeopardized pilot training and aerial firefighting capabilities. Meanwhile, the mayor faced criticism for her absence during a major fire in the Palisades, where water resources were depleted. Reporters questioned her about the budget cuts and her decision to be out of town during the crisis. As of now, there has been no official statement from the mayor regarding these issues, and she has not addressed the media directly.
Full Transcript
Speaker 0: Some new insight into the readiness of the LA City Fire Department. As you mentioned, the fire department was among about a dozen city agencies that were the subject of budget cuts during this last fiscal year. The city does its budget, that begins July 1st, and the year ends the following June. So we're about halfway through this city's fiscal year. And in this year, the city had to make a lot of cuts because of all kinds of over expenditures and not enough revenue.
And one of the departments that got cut was the LA City fire department. I believe it was about $17,600,000. We're trying to find out today what that actually meant in terms of the department's ability to manage a large major like this, and we've gotten a hold of a memo that was written by the LA City fire chief weeks ago. This is dated December 4, 2024, and it provides an assessment of how the city fire department is dealing with all of those budget cuts. I wanna read you a couple of lines out of this.
It said in its opening line, the fire department is facing an unprecedented operational challenge due to the elimination of critical civilian position, civilian positions and a $7,000,000 reduction in overtime. The civilian positions is how the department, absorbed most of that budget cut by not filling, open jobs and, and cutting some of those positions, but there was still $7,000,000 left over. And the fire department uses that money or did use that money each year to pay for a variety of disaster preparedness functions, including, preparing its air operations and its pilots to be able to do water drops. The fire chief wrote on December 4th weeks ago, the reduction in v hours, meaning those overtime hours, has severely limited the department's capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large scale emergencies, including wildfires. And in the report or in the the chief's memo, she specifically addresses the air operations division.
This is the, the unit of the LA City fire department where the pilots load up with water and try to stop the progress of these fires. The overtime money is spent in support of FAA mandated annual pilot training and seasonal helicopter coordinator, training. And the chief wrote, without this funding, pilot compliance and readiness are jeopardized, and aerial firefighting capabilities are diminished. Now it's unclear how these budget cuts affected what has gone on over the last 30 hours or so. As you mentioned, mayor Bass, the fire chief, and a number of other officials are here.
We're gonna put those questions to them. Separately, we heard earlier today about the firefight in the Palisades running out of water. The DWP confirming that 3,000,000 gallon water tanks were depleted by 3 o'clock o'clock this morning as we were covering, live on the air. That's when dozens of homes and buildings were burning in the Palisades. Mayor Bass expected to address some of those issues this afternoon, but she's been out of town for the bulk of what's happened in the last day.
She arrived, from overseas earlier today and was confronted in an airport by a reporter asking why she was out of town during what may be some of the darkest moments this city has seen in a generation.
Speaker 1: Do you owe citizens an apology for being absent while their homes were burning? Do you regret cutting the fire department budget by 1,000,000 of dollars, madam mayor? Have you nothing to say today?
Speaker 0: Back up. Yeah. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Have you absolutely nothing to say to the citizens today? Elon Musk says that you're utterly incompetent. Are you considering your position? Madam mayor, have you absolutely nothing to say to the citizens today who are dealing with this disaster? No apology for them?
Do you think you should have been visiting Ghana while this was unfolding back home?
Speaker 0: So, again, the LA City fire chief in this memo to the city said these budget cuts to the fire department that came about 6 months ago created an unprecedented challenge for the department. Again, still unclear how it may have affected what the fire department has been able or not been able to do in the last hour. We're gonna go inside here and hear from the mayor, hear from the fire chief, and see if we can get some answers. Back to you in the studio.
Speaker 1: Eric, is there any indication at this point what the mayor will say here? Has there been any press release from her staff?
Speaker 0: Not so far. We saw some video clips where, a number of reporters were able to get near the mayor as she arrived in LA, visited with the governor. We believe she toured some of the disaster sites out in the Palisades, but they were specifically not allowed to ask her any questions, and we have not gotten a preview other than a brief statement from the mayor's office that said officials will provide an update on all that's going on in the city right now. Not allowed to ask an elected official questions about what's happening in her city. That seems a bit odd to me.
It's an unusual situation, but, there are times where we are given access for what they'll call a photo spray, like a photo op where we can shoot some video and still photographers can take some photos, but the officials who are there are not prepared or ready or don't want to answer questions. So unusual given the circumstances of the last day. No question. Not unusual the rest of the time.
LA Fire Chief warned last month that budget cuts would affect response to large-scale emergencies
The LA Fire Chief had a warning about budget cuts in the weeks before the devastating Palisades Fire.
nbclosangeles.com