Prologue to a Disaster: Watching a Three-Hour Meeting of Bureaucrats

It’s like watching a ghostly dinner of the crew on board the Titanic. A succession of seamen inform the captain that there are dangerous icebergs ahead and they must change the ship’s direction, but the captain, resplendent in his uniform, champagne glass in hand, merely thanks them for their contributions. He’ll think about it; not to worry, there’s plenty of time. Meanwhile, beef, chicken or fish? 

Conversations on that doomed ship must be left to our imagination, but thanks to YouTube, we have a portal onto another disaster. On December 17, the Los Angeles Board of Fire Commissioners met, as they do twice a month, and as usual, they posted the video afterward for anyone curious enough to watch it. It makes for haunting viewing.

The role of the Fire Commission is, according to the city’s website, to “establish goals and provide direction to the Fire Department through Fire Chief Kristin Crowley,” who also attends and speaks. The civilian members seem like nice people who know little about the fire stations they’re supposed to be overseeing.

So the firefighters come, in manifest desperation, to speak to them during public comments. The first speaker, a 31-year veteran, says he and his colleagues are busier than he’s ever seen and they have ongoing difficulty getting essentials. “The people of Los Angeles rely on us,” he says. “We can’t endure these budget cuts.” President Genethia Hudley-Hayes congratulates him: “That was great,” she says, “you did it within your three minutes time. Just like you’re an old hand at speaking at commission.” 

As more firefighters take the podium to speak, it becomes impossible for the board not to see that the situation in the Los Angeles Fire Department is dire and dangerous. Firefighter Chung Ho says the $23 million cut to their budget “came at exactly the wrong time, with calls for services at an all-time high and our firefighters at their breaking point.” He refers the board to the Fire Chief’s report showing that their call volume has increased by 55% since 2010. “This is unacceptable and clearly unsustainable,” he says, adding that the LAFD is the most understaffed fire department in America. 

Freddy Escobar, president of the United Firefighters of Los Angeles, says “there are some truly shocking findings in the current state of the LAFD. In 1960 our city population was 2.5 million and we had 112 fire stations. In 2020 our city population was 3.9 million and we had 106 stations. That’s 1.4 million more people and six fewer fire stations. In 1969 the LAFD responded to 101,000 emergency incidents. In 2023 we responded to 505,000 emergency incidents. That’s five times the number of calls, with fewer stations and fewer fire stations. …This is simply unacceptable.” He says the department must add at least 62 new fire stations and hundreds more personnel. 

“If we cut one position,” Escobar concludes, “if we close one station, if we close one resource, the residents of Los Angeles are going to pay the ultimate sacrifice and someone will die.” 

“Thank you,” Hudley-Hayes says, as Escobar steps down. 

Councilwoman Traci Park backs up the firefighters with force and clarity, echoing their alarming facts. “We are straining our department’s resources beyond the brink and we cannot continue on this path,” she says. There are gaps in coverage across large swaths of Los Angeles. “Those huge chunks of red, where there is no resource in our city, are scary.” 

Finally comes the truly devastating report, narrated by a dark-haired young man, about the LAFD’s effectiveness between 2018-22. “I’m sad to report that if this were a report card,” he says, “we’d be getting an F.”

Maps of the city show large areas where the fire department simply cannot respond within the recommended time, because fire stations are too few and not where they should be. The LAFD didn’t meet the four-minute response standard for 55% of emergency medical incidents, and during the time studied, the problem got worse. 

The national industry standard recommended for large cities is 1.54-1.81 firefighters per 1,000 residents. Boston has 3.4, Seattle 1.38, Houston 1.73, Chicago 1.82 and San Francisco 1.77. “LA stands, abysmally, at .91,” the man says. It’s not surprising that the LAFD’s response time is nearly double the national average, “because we’re half the size we should be.” He says the obvious solution is to put more firefighters on the street, as Chief Crowley has proposed, and build, at minimum, 62 fire stations. 

“I like your energy,” Vice President Sharon Delugach responds. “The”—she jabs her fists at the air— “urgency!” She laughs. Later she asks, jokingly, if the data measuring LA’s topography takes into account how many Tesla drivers there are—how they don’t know what they’re doing. Everyone laughs.

But Hudley-Hayes is visibly sobered by the report. She proposes “an earthquake shift” to get City Council members to hear this presentation. It only took 20 minutes, after all; it’s not like they’re asking a lot of time. A motion is passed endorsing the report and its recommendations. 

Finally, the Commission hears a brief report motivating the Fire Chief’s proposal for a department budget of $1.2 billion for the coming fiscal year—an increase of 7%. Hudley-Hayes stresses the importance of attending the first meetings about the budget this coming April, to discuss how serious the situation is. She says they need to organize, like in the Civil Rights Movement—there’s plenty of time between now and April. 

At this point, the Fire Commission seems concerned about what they’ve heard. It’s just much too late.

The final order of business is to cancel the next Fire Commission meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, January 7, so firefighters can have some much-deserved time with their families around the holidays. Only we know that instead, they were called that day to the most devastating fire in LA’s history.

Of course, in the Titanic analogy, the Fire Commission is not really the captain. The unseen captain is our mayor, our Nero, who danced in Ghana while Los Angeles burned. Mayor Bass insists she didn’t cut the LAFD budget—that funds were simply reallocated from one department to another—but this meeting reveals otherwise. Many firefighters referred to the $23 million budget cut to the LAFD (more than the $17.5 million widely published), and no one claimed it didn’t happen. We’re now supposed to believe that the horror that engulfed our city has nothing to do with the appalling conditions our brave firefighters described three weeks earlier.

We live, as our elected officials remind us, amid the constant threat of fire and other disasters. But instead of mitigating the danger by funding the best, most fully staffed fire department possible, our mayor and City Council did the exact opposite.

We live, as our elected officials remind us, amid the constant threat of fire and other disasters. But instead of mitigating the danger by funding the best, most fully staffed fire department possible, our mayor and City Council did the exact opposite. City leaders ignored the firefighters’ protests, and innocent people have paid with their homes, their livelihoods and, in many cases, their lives. It’s up to us, as citizens of this city, to hold to account those responsible and draw the lessons of this horrific, all too preventable tragedy.

Kathleen Hayes is the author of ”Antisemitism and the Left: A Memoir.”