Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass ordered the watering down of the after-action report following the crippling wildfires of January 2025, several sources confirmed to the Los Angeles Times.
As Breitbart News reported in December, an initial report from the LA Times noted that the famed after-action report released by the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) showed it had multiple deletions and redactions to provide a smoother picture than what happened:
In one instance, LAFD officials removed language saying that the decision not to fully staff up and pre-deploy all available crews and engines ahead of the extreme wind forecast “did not align” with the department’s policy and procedures during red flag days.
Another deleted passage in the report said that some crews waited more than an hour for an assignment the day of the fire. A section on “failures” was renamed “primary challenges,” and an item saying that crews and leaders had violated national guidelines on how to avoid firefighter deaths and injuries was scratched.
The first draft of the report in August, overseen by the then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva after Mayor Karen Bass fired Kristin Crowley, also had side notes in the margins with suggestions to replace the cover page from a “negative” photo of flaming palm trees to a “positive” photo of firefighters hard at work. As many as seven drafts of the report were created before the final publication. No names were attached to the edited drafts.
According to a report from the Los Angeles Times, those edits were ordered by Mayor Karen Bass, most especially, regarding the city’s “failure not to fully staff up and pre-deploy all available engines ahead of dangerously high winds.” Though Mayor Karen Bass consistently denied ordering the edits, two sources indicated that she did:
Two sources with knowledge of Bass’ office said that after receiving an early draft, the mayor told then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva that the report could expose the city to legal liabilities for those failures. Bass wanted key findings about the LAFD’s actions removed or softened before the report was made public, the sources said — and that is what happened.
The sources told The Times that two people close to Bass informed them of the mayor’s behind-the-scenes role in watering down the report. One source spoke to both of the people; the other spoke to one of them. The sources requested anonymity to speak frankly about the mayor’s private conversations with Villanueva and others.
One source said flatly that Bass “didn’t tell the truth when she said she had nothing to do with changing the report,” with the source saying that a confidant close to Bass said that altering the report “was a bad idea.”
The sources said that two confidants will testify under oath if the matter were to be litigated in court.
“All the changes [The Times] reported on were the ones Karen wanted,” a source said.
Bass’s office denied that the mayor ever demanded changes.
“The Mayor has been clear about her concerns regarding pre-deployment and the LAFD’s response to the fire, which is why there is new leadership at LAFD and why she called for an independent review of the Lachman Fire mop-up. There is absolutely no reason why she would request those details be altered or erased when she herself has been critical of the response to the fire — full stop. She has said this for months,” the statement said.
“This is muckraking journalism at its lowest form. It is dangerous and irresponsible for Los Angeles Times reporters to rely on third hand unsourced information to make unsubstantiated character attacks to advance a narrative that is false,” it added.
As Breitbart News previously reported, a lawsuit filed by over 3,000 Pacific Palisades residents alleged the state of California failed to properly monitor the embers from a smoldering fire set by an arsonist roughly six days before it grew into the most destructive wildfire in Los Angeles history.
Documents obtained by NewsNation showed that the fire began in the early morning of January 1, 2025, and the state failed to monitor the embers over the next six days:
According to documents obtained exclusively by NewsNation, it began in the early morning hours of Jan. 1 when an alleged arsonist started the Lachman Fire.
Six days later, underground embers reignited, starting a second and more devastating fire, the Palisades Fire.
According to the Los Angeles Times report, some drafts of the LAFD after-report noted that at least one on-duty captain called Fire Station 23 in the Palisades on January 7 to report that “the Lachman fire started up again.”
“The reference was deleted in one draft, then restored in the public version, which otherwise contains only a brief mention of the previous fire,” noted the Times. “Some have said that the after-action report’s failure to thoroughly examine the Lachman fire reignition was designed to shield LAFD leadership and Mayor Karen Bass’ administration from criticism and accountability.”
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