Los Angeles fire chief faces calls to resign

Three years ago, when Kristin Crowley became the first female chief in Los Angeles fire department history, she was hailed as a force for stability.

“There is no one better equipped to lead the LAFD right now than Kristin,” then-Mayor Eric Garcetti said of the department’s 22-year veteran. “She’s ready to make history.”

Now, as Los Angeles grapples with a wave of wind-driven wildfires, the fire chief is buffeted by challenges within and outside his ranks, tensions with City Hall and questions on the readiness of his service. The fires, which continue to spread across the city’s west side and into the Altadena community outside the city, have so far scorched nearly 40,000 acres and left at least 27 people dead.

Last week, complaints about her department’s funding escalated into a public dispute between Mayor Karen Bass and Chief Crowley. This week, veteran fire officials said she and her staff should have positioned more engines in advance in high-risk areas like Pacific Palisades, where the fires began on Jan. 7.

At a news conference, she struggled to explain why a crew of about 1,000 firefighters was not ordered to stay on the job last Tuesday as a precaution amid extreme fire signal conditions. alarm. “We jumped where we could,” she said.

A Jan. 13 letter signed by anonymous “retired and active LAFD chief officers” accused her of a series of management failures and asked her to resign. “A large number of chief officers do not believe that you are up to the task,” the five-page letter reads in part.