This article was first published by the nonprofit newsroom LA Public Press on Jan. 10, and is republished here with permission.
As firefighters respond to one of the most devastating disasters in Los Angeles history, the city’s fire department is operating under “extremely under-staffed and under-resourced” conditions, its chief said in December.
The fires erupted a few months after the Los Angeles Fire Department’s budget was slashed by $17.6 million, to $819 million. The cuts led to the elimination of 58 vacant positions. Although the fire budget was later increased mid-year, the earlier budget cuts have ignited debate among a wide group of Angelenos on social media who are watching neighborhoods turn to ash.
The wildfires have surfaced simmering dissatisfaction, and worry, over the amount of resources allotted to firefighting and emergency medical response, which is also handled by LAFD paramedics in Los Angeles, especially in comparison to the amount of funding given to the Los Angeles Police Department. Despite strained city finances, the LAPD budget continued to increase this year — growing by $126 million.
The focus on LAFD’s budget also comes as the chief Kristin Crowley, who is leading the defense against the fires that have upended life in Los Angeles, is pushing for a deeper conversation about deployment levels.
But would additional staffing and resources have changed the outcome of the fires, which have so far leveled more than 10,000 homes?
The answer is unclear.
“There is not a lot that can be done,” when faced with the 50-to-90 mph winds that barreled into LA, capable of spreading billions of embers, climate scientist Daniel Swain said in a YouTube livestream this week.
There was plenty of combustion, too, in the form of dry vegetation in close proximity with structures that are “highly flammable.”
“You can throw an almost infinite number of personnel and fire engines at it – there’s a limit to what you can do under conditions that are just this extreme,” Swain said.
Meanwhile, debate about the level of funding for firefighters continues. In press conferences this week, Crowley was pressed about the budget, but seemed unwilling to confirm if LAFD’s stretched resources have indeed hampered its ability to fight fires.
On Friday though, she was more forthright, telling Fox11’s Gigi Graciette that “the fire department needs to be properly funded,” and she said it isn’t.
“This is more than a job to us, this is who we are, this our duty,” she said. “And when you don’t have that ability, when people don’t listen, that’s why I’m talking to you right now. The fire department needs to be funded – appropriately.”
Crowley told Graciette that she is unable to look “any community member in the eye and say, ‘The LAFD has got your back.’”
When Graciette asked Crowley, ‘Did they fail you?’ and after getting pressed several times, Crowley finally responded, ‘Yes.’
She raised similar worries in December about her department’s capacity to do its job. Asked by a commissioner at a Dec. 17 Fire Commissioner’s meeting whether she believed the department was sorely understaffed, she said yes.
“The LAFD is extremely understaffed and under-resourced,” Crowley told the fire commissioners.
She pointed to data from a two-year deployment analysis conducted for 2018 to 2020 that found the department only had half the staffing it needed compared to other departments across the country.
In a report talking about that analysis, Crowley wrote that her department has fewer fire stations than it did in the 1960s, even as the population of the city has grown.
“We’re going to have a robust conversation about where we need to take LAFD from now and into the future,” she also said. “We can no longer operate this way.”
Crowley was responding to a question by Fire Commissioner Genethia Hudley Hayes, who remarked in astonishment to the findings of the deployment report.
The deployment analysis is being discussed at the same time that the firefighters’ union is raising the idea of a new bond measure. United Firefighters of Los Angeles President Freddy Escobar remarked in public comment at the Dec. 17 meeting that there may be a need for another funding ballot measure, similar to the Prop. F bond measure that was approved in 2000 to open fire stations.
“We know the city is headed into tough financial times, but when it’s your home that is on fire, or when it’s your loved one himself in a heart attack, you know, we can’t wait,” Escobar said.
This was the same meeting where the fire commissioners also took up another report in which Crowley warned that the $819 million budget that city leaders adopted for the department in fiscal year 2024-25 – reducing the budget by $17.6 million from the previous year – would hinder services to support fighting wildfires, responding to major events and other needs.
And some Los Angeles city leaders are in the process of trying to claw back positions that were removed in the recent budget. That would include positions that support the maintenance of firefighting rigs. Right now, only 78% of the department’s fleet is operational, but its goal should be 90%, according to a report from Crowley seeking restoration of those positions.
LA Public Press is an independent newsroom that publishes news in support of a healthier Los Angeles. The non-profit does journalism that interrogates systems of power while supporting those trying to build more equitable and resilient communities.