It’s a multi-layered cake of political disaster, which is what it is. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass vowed she wouldn’t leave the country, only to abscond to Ghana for that nation’s presidential inauguration ceremony. She did this when the Los Angeles County fires erupted, knowing conditions for wildfires were ripe days before she left. Her office would like to claim that she hurried back as quickly as possible when the wildfires became out of control. In truth, during her Ghana stay, as southern California burned, she was at an embassy cocktail reception (via Los Angeles Times):
NEW: The LA Times reports LA Mayor Karen Bass was at an embassy cocktail party in Ghana when the #PalisadesFire first broke out last Tuesday. Bass had left LA days beforehand, as weather forecasts were predicting a serious wind event & major fire risk.https://t.co/RUJXE1UT3s
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) January 15, 2025
As the Palisades fire exploded in Los Angeles on Jan. 7, Mayor Karen Bass was posing for photos at an embassy cocktail party in Ghana, pictures posted on social media show.
By the time she departed the gathering for her flight home, massive plumes of smoke were visible across a wide swath of the city.
Bass was in the West African nation as part of a Biden administration delegation to the inauguration of Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama, which she had attended earlier in the day. She traveled abroad on Jan. 4 as the National Weather Service intensified warnings about a coming windstorm and arrived back in Los Angeles at around 11 a.m. on Jan. 8, more than 24 hours after the fires ignited.
A spokesperson for the mayor said the U.S. Ambassador to Ghana hosted the reception for the delegation before the group departed for the United States on a military plane. Bass spent most of the party making calls in a separate room, he said.
Bass’ decision to leave the city amid the weather warning and the timing of her return have been heavily scrutinized in recent days, drawing ire and national media coverage.
Puck News’ Peter Hamby’s piece about Bass is more damning, with those who donated to her campaign, some big names, saying that if the mayor left knowing that conditions were prime for a wildfire disaster, that’s a dereliction of duty.
“If it is true that she left the country on a Saturday after the warning came out, that is a dereliction of duty," Endeavor C.E.O. Ari Emanuel, who donated to Bass’s 2022 campaign, told me [Hamby].”
The mayor also scrubbed memos from the Los Angeles Fire Department about the lack of manpower and how it degraded their response to natural disasters. Bass cut $17 million from the LAFD months before the blaze. And as for the fire department, maybe they shouldn’t have focused so much on DEI and other irrelevant aspects of training for their employees. Learn how to extinguish and control fires; no one cares if those people are female, black, Asian, Latino, or gay.
And Mr. Newsom, you’re guilty of gross incompetence as well. It’s as if the Democrats in this state thought that because they’re liberal, it provided a shield against natural disasters. We believe in science; therefore, nothing bad can happen here with what we do. Wrong.
The hits just keep on coming for Newsom. https://t.co/L5XZ58TmbL
— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) January 9, 2025
Does Bass regret the trip?
Video for those who didn't see it. pic.twitter.com/WZi5ncV10m
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) January 14, 2025
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