LA Fire Chief Kristin Crowley has been dismissed by Mayor Karen Bass, supply says

Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley is clinging onto her job by a thread sources say, after she hugged staff goodbye and entered a meeting with the mayor.

Crowley told staff in her office she was getting fired by Mayor Karen Bass at a meeting 4pm on Friday.

But she emerged from the meeting saying she was still in her job – for now.

‘Kristin was summoned by Bass this afternoon, about 4pm. She came back from that meeting, hugged her staff goodbye and left. She said she was fired,’ the source said.

The alleged booting follows Crowley lashing out against the Mayor’s cuts to her department, in an interview with a local Fox TV station around 12pm Friday.

‘My message is the fire department needs to be properly funded,’ the Chief said. ‘It’s not.’

‘Did they fail you?’ Fox LA’s Gigi Graciette asked. ‘Yes,’ Crowley replied.

The Fire Department (LAFD) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A second source close to Bass’ office told DailyMail.com that they were aware Crowley ‘was called to the office’ this afternoon, but did not know the outcome of the Mayor and Chief’s meeting.

A retired senior LAFD official told DailyMail.com that he was shocked by Crowley’s comments in her TV interview.

‘In my entire career, a fire chief has never thrown a mayor under the bus. It’s unbelievable, for her to go on the offensive like that,’ he said.

He added that amid fury over alleged failures in preparedness and in tackling the fires that leveled neighborhoods in Los Angeles this week, the city leaders are fearing for their positions and are starting to turn on each other.

‘It was a brilliant move on her part. One of them’s going to get taken out. Either they’re going to go after the Mayor or the Fire Chief,’ the ex-LAFD top brass said. ‘Saying ‘She defunded me, I didn’t have the money’ is a brilliant move.’

Tensions were already at boiling point between Bass and Crowley, even before the disastrous fires broke out on Tuesday.

The Mayor pushed through budget cuts of $17.6 million through a recent council vote, prompting Crowley to write her a memo on December 4 warning the slash ‘severely limited the department’s capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires.’

And DailyMail.com exclusively revealed a second LAFD memo written this Monday, the day before the Palisades Fire began, outlining a further $49 million of cut allegedly demanded by Bass.

In shocking statements to Fox LA on Friday, Crowley said she had not been informed that the Santa Ynez Reservoir in the Palisades had been empty and offline for weeks with scheduled maintenance by LA Department of Water and Power (DWP).

On Friday DailyMail.com revealed LAFD insiders were blaming DWP CEO Janisse Quiñones for scheduling repairs to the reservoir’s cover during brushfire season, and for failing to repair a large number hydrants which they said had been broken for years, including in the Palisades.

Crowley also appeared to point the finger at DWP for running out of water to provide firefighters battling the blaze this week.

‘We weren’t aware,’ she said, referring to the empty reservoir. ‘I don’t know how the water gets to the hydrants. Please defer that to DWP.

‘It’s my job to stand up and say, justifiably, exactly what the fire department needs,’ the chief added.

‘When a firefighter comes up to a hydrant, we expect there’s going to be water. We don’t control the water supply. We’re there to protect lives and property.

She said her firefighters ‘did absolutely everything they could do to rescue and save people’s lives and property.’

In an extraordinary public airing of grievances, Crowley acknowledged to a reporter with KTTV that the city, and by extension, Mayor Bass, failed its residents during the wildfires. 

When pushed several times if the city had failed, Crowley’s response was unflinching: ‘Yes.’

The stark admission sent shockwaves through the city, as Crowley detailed the dire state of her department. 

Years of budget cuts, she said, had left the LAFD grappling with crippling staffing shortages, outdated equipment, and insufficient resource – issues she claimed had been repeatedly brought to the city’s attention.

‘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,’ Crowley said. 

‘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.’

Crowley painted a grim picture of the department’s daily operations, revealing that firefighters are handling more than 1,500 calls and transporting 650 patients every day under normal conditions. The wildfires have only exacerbated these challenges.

‘We are screaming to be properly funded to make sure that our firefighters can do their jobs so that we can serve the community,’ Crowley said.

‘This isn’t a new problem. It’s been a problem for years. And it’s time for it to be fixed.’

Despite her repeated warnings and detailed memos outlining the department’s needs, the city slashed the LAFD’s budget by over $17 million in recent years. 

The result, Crowley said, was predictable: slower response times and a diminished capacity to combat the growing frequency and intensity of fires.

‘Any budget cut is going to impact our ability to provide service,’ she explained. ‘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.’

Crowley’s criticism extends beyond the immediate crisis, pointing to a systemic failure to scale the fire department’s capabilities alongside the city’s explosive growth.

‘We know we need 62 new fire stations. We need to double the size of our firefighters,’ she said. ‘The growth of this city since 1960 has doubled, and we have less fire stations.’

The fire chief called out city officials for ignoring ‘real data’ that supports the fire department’s repeated requests for increased funding.

‘When you talk about sounding the alarm and asking and requesting budgets that are easily justifiable based off of the data, real data shows what the fire department needs to serve this beautiful city and the beautiful community that we swore that we would. That’s what that is about.’

Crowley’s remarks were not just a critique but also a heartfelt plea for immediate and sustained action. 

Emphasizing the non-political nature of her role, she said, ‘None of us on the fire department are politicians. We’re public servants first. We took an oath to serve the public before ourselves and even before our families.

‘What our people need to do their jobs is to make sure that we can save lives and that we can protect property to the greatest capacity,’ Crowley said. ‘But we need to be funded appropriately. And that’s where my head is at.’

Bass has yet to respond to Crowley’s blistering criticism, but the fallout is already apparent. 

Accusations of negligence and failure to prioritize public safety have added fuel to mounting dissatisfaction among residents, many of whom are reeling from the devastation caused by the wildfires.

For Mayor Karen Bass, this week’s horror show was compounded by every chief executive’s worst nightmare. She was halfway around the globe, on a trip to Ghana as part of a presidential delegation.

As her city faced its greatest crisis in decades, the first-term mayor confronted a critical test of her leadership two years after taking office. After rushing home to help manage the city’s response, she pushed back against a loud chorus of critics from near and far.

‘LA has to be strong, united,’ Bass said at a press conference Thursday evening. ‘We will reject those who seek to divide us and seek to misinform.’

Bass eventually made it back to Los Angeles by military transport, but only after a more than 24-hour absence, during which critics assailed her for not being better prepared. 

More than 5,000 homes burned as fire hydrants ran dry because water demand was so high it drained the city’s reserve tanks.