Budget Cuts to Fire Department Are a Point of Contention, but the Full Picture Is Complicated

Still, the budget picture is far from rosy. Chief Kristin M. Crowley of the Los Angeles Fire Department wrote a memo to the fire commission last month saying the overtime cut was creating “unprecedented operational challenges” — both in fulfilling everyday tasks like payroll processing and long-term planning for major emergencies like big wildfires or earthquakes.

She wrote that specialized programs, including air operations and disaster response, relied on staff working overtime hours and were at risk of becoming less effective. She added that the loss of civilian positions was also squeezing firefighters who had to backfill some of those responsibilities.

In November, Chief Crowley wrote a separate memo to the commission focusing on the bigger picture: a fire department that has not changed much in size since the 1960s despite the city’s population surging by more than a million people since then.

She wrote that the call volume rose by a factor of five between 1969 and 2023, but that the department had not been given the staffing and new fire stations it needs to respond effectively, and that response times were steadily increasing.

Ms. Bass has repeatedly defended her financial support of the fire department this week, saying that with such ferocious winds, the firefighters stood little chance.

“We were in tough budgetary times, everybody knew that, but the impact of our budget really did not impact what we’ve been going through over the last few days,” the mayor said at a news conference Thursday morning.

Freddy Escobar, the president of the local firefighters’ union, has worked fighting fires in Los Angeles for 35 years. He said that Ms. Bass was correct that the weather conditions made for a perfect storm, but that her budget cuts had a real impact, too.

The eliminated positions mean fewer mechanics to maintain the department’s fleet, and there is a yard full of broken-down trucks and engines just sitting there, he said. He said the fire chief could have also used overtime pay to beef up crews as soon as the fierce winds were predicted if she had more money.

“If we had more apparatus and more staffing,” he said, “it sure would have given us a better chance.”