L.A. Mayor Karen Bass In Africa As Firefighters Discover Empty Hydrants Amid SoCal Inferno

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) attended the inauguration of Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama on Tuesday while wildfires ravaged her city, scorching hundreds of acres. The taxpayer-funded delegation was led by Shalanda D. Young, Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget.

The wildfires come as California has deployed over 1,400 firefighting personnel to battle the blazes. While officials have yet to determine the extent of the damage in the Pacific Palisades wildfire, approximately 30,000 residents remain under evacuation orders, and at least 13,000 structures are at risk. Nearly 300,000 residents across California were left without power early Wednesday morning. The fires have been worsened by powerful Santa Ana winds, with gusts exceeding 60 mph in some areas.

This is by far the craziest video from the fire in Los Angeles. This guy is filming huge walls of fire surrounding a house they’re in, and there’s another person and a dog. I have no idea why they didn’t evacuate or what happened to them. Let’s hope they’re okay. #PalisadesFire pic.twitter.com/QYtsBSKvdl

— Sia Kordestani (@SiaKordestani) January 8, 2025

Meanwhile, emergency responders are facing an alarming shortage of water as reports emerge that several of the city’s hydrants are running dry. “The hydrants are down,” one firefighter said, according to The Los Angeles Times. “Water supply just dropped,” another firefighter added, the paper reported. The Department of Water and Power later confirmed that some hydrants were empty but refrained from providing an official count of how many were affected.

#BREAKING: Los Angeles fire hydrants are OUT OF WATER because the county REFUSED to refill reservoirs, per Rick Caruso

“You can’t fight a fire without water!”

The Mayor did ZERO prep despite the advanced warning of winds and fire risk.

This is EXACTLY what happened on Maui! pic.twitter.com/fBj445yGgw

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) January 8, 2025

Rick Caruso, billionaire real estate developer and former commissioner of the city’s water board, pointed to the reservoirs linked to the hydrants as the source of the problem. “This is a window into a systemic problem of the city — not only of mismanagement, but our infrastructure is old,” said Caruso, who ran unsuccessfully for Los Angeles mayor in 2022.

The LA Fire Dept passed a “racial equity plan” to end “systemic, institutional, and structural racism” in LA. Part of it is a chart to map out the race of every employee to make sure they’re racially diverse enough pic.twitter.com/WDJhZbAjuP

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 8, 2025

In the midst of the crisis, reports have resurfaced that the Los Angeles Fire Department has been hit with significant budget cuts. Mayor Bass’s 2024-2025 fiscal year budget was slashed by $17.6 million, with an initial proposal to cut $23 million. Bass has come under sharp criticism since the wildfires erupted, with many attributing the fires to these budget cuts.

Karen Bass cut fire dept funding by $17.6M.

That was her 2nd biggest cut. pic.twitter.com/RwcQWqEZ8a

— Film The Police LA (@FilmThePoliceLA) January 8, 2025

“Karen Bass cut the Fire Department budget by $418 million. Now she’s asking for volunteers to fight a fire. All while she’s on vacation in Ghana. Lmao,” one person lamented on X, as reported by the New York Post.

“Oh look, Karen Bass’ budget called for the elimination of LA’s Emergency Management Department’s positions (the department that’s running the show). This is after she cut the Fire Department by nearly $17M,” another user wrote.

Obama made sure that Rick Caruso, who is extremely competent, lost to utterly incompetent Mayor Karen (her real name) https://t.co/Fveo189wBp

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 8, 2025

And the LA Fire Department sent surplus equipment to Ukraine…. https://t.co/jeidaYxg0K pic.twitter.com/38UtQNrtvP

— John LeFevre (@JohnLeFevre) January 8, 2025

“This out-of-touch career politician is completely unfit to serve. It’s time for a recall,” a third user added.

As PJ Media notes further; cutting fire protection in Los Angeles is like turning off tornado warning sirens in Oklahoma City. It might not come back to bite you right away on the rear end, but eventually, it’s guaranteed to.

When you think of fighting fires, probably one of the first things you think of is water — and lots of it. And yet making sure there was plenty of water wasn’t on Los Angeles County’s to-do list.

Then there’s Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley, whom local ABC7 celebrated as “the first LGBTQ+ person to the lead the department, [and] also the first woman.” Her focus seems to have been less on fighting fires and more on launching the “Los Angeles Fire Department’s first-ever Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Bureau (DEI) focused on ensuring a safe, diverse, and inclusive workplace for all.”

pic.twitter.com/4YTzZSCyP3

— Sonny Sims (@sonnysims) January 8, 2025

Crowley can fiddle with DEI while Pacific Pallisades burns.

Both of those previous links are courtesy of FrontPageMag’s Daniel Greenfield, who wrote, “Right now, I think even the most die-hard woke in LA would take competence over diversity.” The problem, of course, is they didn’t choose competence over diversity when it mattered most. By the time the fires start and the winds whip up, it’s too late.

Looking higher up the ladder of Democrat governance, here’s a guy who has been there and done that — my friend and Townhall colleague Kurt Schlichter:

I commanded two reinforced battalions in Northern San Diego County during the 2007 fires. I am wondering if the Cal Army Guard has been mobilized yet. Seems Newsom and the other Democrats running the state have been caught off guard yet again.

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) January 8, 2025

Yeah, well, in 2007 California had a Republican governor — its last, Arnold Schwarzenegger. But even a nominal RINO like Arnold showed more basic competence than California’s Permanent Democratic Majority.

“This is not climate change, this is criminal negligence,” one X user noted.

Let me remind you of something Rahm Emanuel said during the 2008 financial crisis: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

Crises are a government’s favorite justification for bigger and more powerful government. Even if sometimes it has to manufacture the crisis itself.