Text messages from Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have been released after public records requests from multiple news sources, shedding light on her response to the January wildfires while she was traveling abroad. According to ABC7, the mayor's texts, initially said to be auto-deleted, were retrieved with "special software," portraying a mayor both anxious and frustrated as she managed the city's emergency response from afar.
Detailed in her communications are Bass's efforts to coordinate disaster management across multiple time zones, according to FOX 11, after departing Ghana, some 7,500 miles away, the mayor received critical updates about the fires and potential evacuations while in transit, Mayer Bass, who faced criticism for being out of the country as the fires raged, has insisted that former L.A. Fire Chief Kristin Crowley did not preemptively alert her to the fire risks despite forecasters predicting dangerous conditions days before the blaze.
In messages obtained by The Los Angeles Times, Bass can be seen coordinating with state and federal officials, including California senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, pleading for help and emphasizing the dire need for disaster aid. The correspondence further depicts a mayor keenly aware of the urgency as the Palisades Fire expanded to 200 acres with evacuation orders on the horizon and homes at risk of being consumed by the flames.
On her return journey, Mayor Bass stayed in communication with staff and officials, grappling with the unfolding crisis, demonstrating that despite her physical absence, she remained integrally involved in the city's disaster response; Bass conveyed to staff that while she was on a military plane she had phone access, a detail reported by CBS News, she texted them, "I have phone access on the plane!!! If you see a strange number it's ME! 301 it will show as a military base," underpinning her effort to remain reachable despite the complications of international travel and time differences.
While Mayor Bass's physical absence during the fires has been met with scrutiny, as an LA Times-UC Berkeley poll evidenced, 41% of Los Angeles residents rated her response as poor or very poor. She defended her engagement during a press conference, stating, "What I would like the public to take from the text messages, is that although I was not here, I was engaged every minute I could possibly be engaged."
