Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley said that the City of Los Angeles failed its over 100,000 displaced residents who were forced to evacuate from the ongoing wildfire siege.
When asked by Fox News’ affiliate, KTTV, if the City of Los Angeles, and its Mayor Karen Bass failed the city, Crowley replied: “Yes.”
Crowley said that pressing staffing shortages impacted the department’s response time when the blaze began tearing across Los Angeles.
“Any budget cut is going to impact our ability to provide service,” she 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.”
Crowley said that staffing shortages and lack of resources has been a pressing issue facing the department for years. She pointed to a series of memos she sent to the city identifying in detail the needs of the department.
“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 since day one,” she 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.”