Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass Criticized for Defending Absence During Palisades Fire

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is facing renewed criticism on the eve of her re-election bid after defending her decision to remain outside the city during a devastating wildfire.

Bass, 73, came under intense backlash on social media after traveling to Ghana as the Palisades wildfire tore through California. She also pointed to the size of Los Angeles as a reason the city faces so many crises.

At the KBLA Talk 1580 Town Hall and Ballot Forum on Saturday, Bass was questioned about her January 2025 trip, which coincided with the disaster that killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes.

“When people go through grief—one of the stages of grief, and I know grief very well, is anger. People are mad,” she said.

“You are mad and I understand that. And even though objectively, even if I was here, there really wouldn’t have been anything that was done different.”

Bass then appeared to attribute some of the challenges to the sheer size of Los Angeles.

“The problem in our very big city is that it’s very difficult to leave town and not have something that happens,” Bass said.

“I’m not a firefighter, obviously, but it’s the role of mayor to be here.”

Her remarks drew swift criticism online, with angry constituents blaming the mayor for what they viewed as the city’s inadequate preparation.

“Even if she was there she still would have let them burn it down,” one Facebook user wrote.

Another user argued that the weather event had been forecast a week earlier and criticized the lack of additional staffing, pre-positioned equipment and generators at water pump stations. The commenter also pointed to the Palisades reservoir, which they said had been dry for months, writing that such decisions were made “at the highest levels” and accusing those responsible of incompetence or indifference.

A third commenter called Bass a “self-serving socialist” and alleged that the fire department was unprepared, the reservoirs were dry and hydrants failed, describing the situation as “a failure to provide basic services.”

Other commenters said Bass, her opponent Nithya Raman and California Governor Gavin Newsom “should be in prison together.”

“Mind you its has taken her now to really talk about it. Emergencies do happy and she’s right that the city is huge but there are more predictive ways we can organize online and in person and Bass didn’t make herself available,” another user wrote on X.

“Except there was a city wide emergency warning when she left for Ghana and the city was unprepared to respond to what happened,” another comment read.

Bass ultimately admitted months later that her trip to Ghana during the wildfires had been a mistake. In a July 2025 interview with Vice News, she said: “I was asked, ‘Do I regret going?’ Hell yeah.”

‘I mean, let me just do a comparison. If you are out of town and your kid or a member of your family gets sick or hurt, it doesn’t matter where you were or why you were there. You feel horrible,’ she said at the time, echoing similar wording to her latest defense over the contentious issue.

The mayor had traveled to West Africa as part of a US delegation attending the presidential inauguration in Ghana – despite multiple fire weather warnings issued for Los Angeles prior to her departure.

The Los Angeles Times later reported that Bass’s team had been made aware of the fire risks before the trip.

Still, Bass insists she was caught off guard.

‘I’m really not trying to give excuses, but there was no way in the world I knew that the city was in danger when I left,’ she said. ‘Absolutely no way.’

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Upon returning, Bass said she questioned fire officials about the lack of advance warning.

‘I did ask the chief when I came back, like, “Why didn’t you tell me?” and basically the response was: “Because we have Santa Anas all the time, and nobody expected hurricane-force winds.”‘

‘I didn’t get briefed. That’s true,’ she admitted. ‘But again, people did not anticipate the historic wind. And it wasn’t just LA – it was the county too.’

Bass said she spent much of the 12-hour flight back to the ‘city on fire’ on the phone preparing an emergency declaration.

She landed back in the US the day after wildfires began ravaging neighborhoods like Pacific Palisades.

Despite her admission of ‘wrongdoing,’ Bass continued to deflect criticism during the interview with Vice News’ Shane Smith, shifting blame to the county’s fire leadership.

‘What typically happens is that if there’s going to be a big weather event, there are these briefings that happen,’ she explained.

‘It’s either initiated by the fire department or the emergency department. I was used to the fire chief calling me and telling me, “This is getting ready to happen, come over, I need to brief you.” Everything goes into motion. That didn’t happen – in the city or in the county.’

When she eventually returned from Ghana, the embattled mayor received harsh criticism.

The controversy deepened after it was revealed Bass had proposed slashing the Los Angeles Fire Department’s budget by $23 million in 2024 – the final approved cut amounted to a whopping $17.6 million, the Daily Mail previously reported.

Amid growing backlash, Bass dismissed Fire Chief Kristin Crowley in February 2025.

However, Crowley pushed back, accusing city leaders of failing to support emergency operations during the fires.

But Bass defended her actions during the all-encompassing interview.

‘Yes, there were broken fire engines,’ she said. ‘We find out later that those fire engines were there broken because they’re used for spare parts. But there were 40 fire engines that were idle because they didn’t have the staff that [Crowley] sent home.’

She also insisted the fire department’s budget was never truly cut – only delayed during labor negotiations.

‘And the budget cut – I don’t know the reasons for it – and then the budget cut that never happened,’ Bass added.

‘What we did when we did the budget was we put money aside for fire because we were in labor negotiations. When the labor negotiations were done, we put it back in the budget. Which is a common thing. We’re doing that right now.’

Just a couple of months ago, Bass was once again out of town in Chicago when another massive fire broke out at a cold storage facility in Boyle Heights. 

‘I was in Chicago three hours away, and I was there 24 hours’ Bass said, as she noted that she was constantly communicating with LAFD Fire Chief Jaime Moore while there. 

Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, told the LA Times: ‘We’re talking about a fire, and she’s out of town, so it completely and totally reinforces that narrative of January 2025, and that’s not helpful.’

Gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton was among those criticizing Bass, and said at a news conference at the time: ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with Karen Bass that she seems to keep leaving the city every time something happens.’

The Daily Mail reached out to Mayor Karen Bass’s Office for comment.