Months after the most destructive forest fires in modern history in Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass is looking to add dozens of new employees to the fire department, even if a range of other agencies are faced with layoffs.
The mayor, who worked to fill a budgetary difference of nearly a billion dollars, called to add 227 positions to the fire service in his budget proposal for 2025-26, published on Monday.
About half of the new hires would be firefighters, in a department of just under 3,250 firefighters. The remaining new positions include 25 new emergency medical technicians in addition to mechanics and others.
Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the city’s fire committee, said the fire service for more than a decade on Monday.
“I am very hopeful,” she said about Bass’s budget proposal. “The mayor absolutely said that she understood that we will have to have more funding.”
The Bass office did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
In the days following the fire of Palisades, the head of fire at the time, Kristin Crowley, said that the budget cuts had hindered the capacity of the department to fight the fire. Bass and his team responded by saying that once employee increases have been taken into account, the fire budget actually increased this year.
In the wake of the fire, which destroyed nearly 7,000 structures and killed 12 people, Crowley and the firefighters’ union described the department as a seriously sub-financed.
In an interview with the anchor of CNN Jake Tapper on January 10, Crowley said that his department did not have enough firefighters and did not have enough mechanics to repair the emergency vehicles broken down.
At one point, Tapper asked if the budget cuts harm the capacity of its agency to fight forest fires.
“I want to be very, very clear. Yes,” said Crowley.
On February 21, Bass ousted Crowley, complaining that she had not heard of the chief, in the midst of aggravation of wind forecasts, before the end of the fire. She also questioned the deployment decisions of the chief.
A Times survey revealed that LAFD officials have chosen not to order that around 1,000 firefighters remain in service for a second quarter of work when the winds were built – which would have doubled the staff when the fire of the palisades broke out on the morning of January 7.
Freddy Escobar, President of the Firefighters in section 112 of Los Angeles City, said that the department did not have enough fire trucks and engines for these 1,000 firefighters.
But several former LAFD chief officers told Times that the maintenance of firefighters in service would have enabled the ministry to send dozens of additional engines to palisades and other high -risk areas. And firefighters not allocated to additional engines would have been available for other tasks.
On Monday, Escobar said that the budget proposed by the mayor was a step in the right direction.
“These are difficult decisions that the mayor must make, and she favors the firefighters and the first stakeholders. We are grateful,” he said.
However, Escobar said that the department was “terribly” in an infection and sub-financed.
The municipal council has until the end of May to make changes to the mayor’s budget, then approve it.
Hudley Hayes underlined the need for additional mechanisms to ensure that fire equipment and vehicles are in working order. She said that these mechanisms must be better offset so that they do not leave for more remunerated positions. The mayor’s budget includes the financing of four heavy equipment mechanisms and nine mechanical aids, as well as a maintenance worker.
The budget also includes new initiatives from the fire service, including the creation of a fire protection program and medical fire medicine, which “provides fire protection, appropriate app and medical care to people with homelessness”. The new program would have more than 50 firefighters and a range of other employees, representing 67 of the 227 new posts in the ministry.
In 2024, 16,742 fires in the city were linked to people who have undergone a shelter, against 4,124 in 2018, according to data from the fire service.
The member of the municipal council Traci Park, whose district includes the palisades of the Pacific and who pleaded for more financing of the fire service, said that the mayor’s proposal was a good sign but that the city should go further.
“This is a small drop in the bucket of what is really necessary for the size of our fire service in Los Angeles,” she said.
Park underlined a motion that the Council adopted last month to explore a voting measure which would provide additional funding to the firefighters.
Some residents of Palisades also expressed the hope of the mayor’s proposal to provide additional resources to the fire service.
Larry Vein manages the Pali Strong Foundation, which helps people with problems with palisades fire. Vein’s own house has suffered smoke damage in the fire.
“Have a lot of residents were frustrated? Is there appropriate resource allowances in the right place? We had enough fire budget? Maybe,” said Vein. “But we have to wait impatiently.”
The staff editor David Zahnis has contributed to this report.
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