Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is facing fresh heat on the eve of her re-election bid, after defending being out of the city during a devastating wildfire.
Bass, 73, defended her trip to Ghana at the same time as the Palisades wildfire rampaged through California, prompting severe backlash on social media as she blamed the city’s size for its high number of crises.
Bass was asked at the KBLA Talk 1580 Town Hall and Ballot Forum on Saturday about her travels during the disaster in January 2025 that killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes.
‘When people go through grief – one of the stages of grief, and I know grief very well, is anger. People are mad,’ she began.
‘You are mad and I understand that. And even though objectively, even if I was here, there really wouldn’t have been anything that was done different.’
Bass then seemed to shift blame to the size of the city.
‘The problem in our very big city is that it’s very difficult to leave town and not have something that happens,’ Bass said.
‘I’m not a firefighter, obviously, but it’s the role of mayor to be here.’
Mayor Karen Bass, 73, defended her travels to Ghana when the devastating fires rampaged through California and blamed the city’s size for its high number of crises at the KBLA Talk 1580 Town Hall and Ballot Forum on Saturday
Bass was asked why she felt the need to apologize for leaving town during the disaster in January 2025 that killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes
It took Bass months to admit that her trip to Ghana during the wildfires was a mistake, as she told Vice News in July 2025: ‘I was asked, “Do I regret going?” Hell yeah’
The speech, however, drew criticism online as angry constituents blame the mayor for the city’s lack of preparation.
‘Even if she was there she still would have let them burn it down,’ one user wrote on Facebook.
Another wrote: ‘The weather event was forecasted a week before, no up-staffing, prepositioning of extra equipment, placement of generators at water pump stations or testing and confirming generators already at pump stations were working in the event of power failures…Palisades reservoir had been dry for months…..all these decisions are made at the highest levels….those in charge either are incompetent or didn’t [give a f***].’
A third comment dubbed Bass a ‘self-serving socialist’ and said: ‘The [fire department] was unprepared, the reservoirs were dry, the hydrants didn’t work. That’s a failure to provide basic services.’
Other commenters fumed that Bass, her opponent Nithya Raman and Governor Gavin Newsom ‘should be in prison together.’
‘Mind you its has taken her now to really talk about it. Emergencies do happy and she’s right that the city is huge but there are more predictive ways we can organize online and in person and Bass didn’t make herself available,’ another user said on X.
‘Except there was a city wide emergency warning when she left for Ghana and the city was unprepared to respond to what happened,’ one comment read.
It took Bass months to admit that her trip to Ghana during the wildfires was a mistake, as she told Vice News in July 2025: ‘I was asked, “Do I regret going?” Hell yeah.’
An aerial view shows homes destroyed in the Palisades Fire on January 27, 2025
Bass’s latest speech, however, drew criticism online as angry constituents blame the mayor for the city’s lack of preparation while she campaigns for re-election
‘I mean, let me just do a comparison. If you are out of town and your kid or a member of your family gets sick or hurt, it doesn’t matter where you were or why you were there. You feel horrible,’ she said at the time, echoing similar wording to her latest defense over the contentious issue.
The mayor had traveled to West Africa as part of a US delegation attending the presidential inauguration in Ghana – despite multiple fire weather warnings issued for Los Angeles prior to her departure.
The Los Angeles Times later reported that Bass’s team had been made aware of the fire risks before the trip.
Still, Bass insists she was caught off guard.
‘I’m really not trying to give excuses, but there was no way in the world I knew that the city was in danger when I left,’ she said. ‘Absolutely no way.’
Upon returning, Bass said she questioned fire officials about the lack of advance warning.
‘I did ask the chief when I came back, like, “Why didn’t you tell me?” and basically the response was: “Because we have Santa Anas all the time, and nobody expected hurricane-force winds.”‘
‘I didn’t get briefed. That’s true,’ she admitted. ‘But again, people did not anticipate the historic wind. And it wasn’t just LA – it was the county too.’
The mayor had traveled to West Africa as part of a US delegation attending the presidential inauguration in Ghana – despite multiple fire weather warnings issued for Los Angeles prior to her departure
Bass said she spent much of the 12-hour flight back to the ‘city on fire’ on the phone preparing an emergency declaration.
She landed back in the US the day after wildfires began ravaging neighborhoods like Pacific Palisades.
Despite her admission of ‘wrongdoing,’ Bass continued to deflect criticism during the interview with Vice News’ Shane Smith, shifting blame to the county’s fire leadership.
‘What typically happens is that if there’s going to be a big weather event, there are these briefings that happen,’ she explained.
‘It’s either initiated by the fire department or the emergency department. I was used to the fire chief calling me and telling me, “This is getting ready to happen, come over, I need to brief you.” Everything goes into motion. That didn’t happen – in the city or in the county.’
When she eventually returned from Ghana, the embattled mayor received harsh criticism.
The controversy deepened after it was revealed Bass had proposed slashing the Los Angeles Fire Department’s budget by $23 million in 2024 – the final approved cut amounted to a whopping $17.6 million, the Daily Mail previously reported.
Amid growing backlash, Bass dismissed Fire Chief Kristin Crowley in February 2025.
Firefighters watch the flames from the Palisades Fire burning a home during a powerful windstorm on January 8, 2025 in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California
However, Crowley pushed back, accusing city leaders of failing to support emergency operations during the fires.
But Bass defended her actions during the all-encompassing interview.
‘Yes, there were broken fire engines,’ she said. ‘We find out later that those fire engines were there broken because they’re used for spare parts. But there were 40 fire engines that were idle because they didn’t have the staff that [Crowley] sent home.’
She also insisted the fire department’s budget was never truly cut – only delayed during labor negotiations.
‘And the budget cut – I don’t know the reasons for it – and then the budget cut that never happened,’ Bass added.
‘What we did when we did the budget was we put money aside for fire because we were in labor negotiations. When the labor negotiations were done, we put it back in the budget. Which is a common thing. We’re doing that right now.’
Just a couple of months ago, Bass was once again out of town in Chicago when another massive fire broke out at a cold storage facility in Boyle Heights.
‘I was in Chicago three hours away, and I was there 24 hours’ Bass said, as she noted that she was constantly communicating with LAFD Fire Chief Jaime Moore while there.
Gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton was among those criticizing Bass, and said: ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with Karen Bass that she seems to keep leaving the city every time something happens’
Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, told the LA Times: ‘We’re talking about a fire, and she’s out of town, so it completely and totally reinforces that narrative of January 2025, and that’s not helpful.’
Gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton was among those criticizing Bass, and said at a news conference at the time: ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with Karen Bass that she seems to keep leaving the city every time something happens.’
The Daily Mail reached out to Mayor Karen Bass’s Office for comment.
