Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass admitted on a podcast in November that she fumbled the response to the city’s most catastrophic wildfire ever, but her team yanked the footage before it could go public, the New York Post reported.
The Palisades and Eaton fires, now etched in history as LA’s most destructive blaze, exposed glaring failures in leadership as Bass confessed to mishandling the crisis on a podcast, only for her team to scramble and scrub the evidence from public view.
During an interview on Matt Welch’s “The Fifth Column” podcast, released last month, Bass let slip her candid thoughts on the disaster response.
“Both sides botched it,” Bass declared, a rare moment of honesty that cuts through the usual political spin.
Yet, instead of owning the mistake, her team quickly moved to yank the four-minute confession off YouTube, claiming the chat happened after the interview ended.
That excuse rings hollow when accountability is already in short supply, especially for a disaster that claimed 19 lives in west Altadena due to missing evacuation alerts.
Bass herself pointed out the deadly oversight, saying, “They didn’t tell people they were on fire,” highlighting a breakdown that left residents defenseless.
The tragedy unfolded as the fires raged, yet Bass failed to deploy a crisis response team—hundreds of trained volunteers backed by nearly a million dollars in funding—for almost a week in January.
Only after inquiries from The Post did the team finally mobilize, raising questions about whether public pressure, not leadership, spurred action.
Before her podcast slip, Bass had already pointed fingers at former fire chief Kristin Crowley, firing her in February while on a diplomatic trip to Ghana.
That trip, which Bass later called a mistake, also saw her delete text messages about the fires, a move ABC7 revealed violated public disclosure laws.
Her defense—that her phone auto-deletes messages after 30 days—does little to ease concerns about transparency during a historic crisis.
The Los Angeles Fire Department union boss didn’t mince words, slamming Bass for making Crowley a scapegoat in the aftermath.
Meanwhile, Bass has hinted at frustration over bearing the brunt of criticism, telling the LA Times the situation was “unfortunate” and suggesting others, like the Board of Supervisors, escape scrutiny.
This attempt to spread blame, while sidestepping her own delays and deletions, feels like a dodge when Angelenos deserve straight answers after such profound loss.
