{"id":800659,"date":"2026-05-16T13:38:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T13:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/800659\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T13:38:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T13:38:13","slug":"bass-isnt-a-firefighter-but-that-doesnt-mean-shes-not-responsible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/800659\/","title":{"rendered":"Bass isn\u2019t a firefighter, but that doesn\u2019t mean she\u2019s not responsible"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><b>To the editor<\/b>: I just don\u2019t buy the premise that Mayor Karen Bass isn\u2019t responsible for the Palisades fire (<a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/opinion\/letters-to-the-editor\/story\/2026-05-13\/mayoral-debate-palisades-fire\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cLetters to the Editor: Mayoral candidates should offer fire solutions beyond just blaming Bass,\u201d<\/a> May 13). I realize, as she has said, that she isn\u2019t a fireperson, but she is in charge of firing those responsible. Instead, some of them turned up at the Academy Awards to take a bow.<\/p>\n<p>The tragedy that cost 12 lives could have been avoided by stationing a firetruck at the scene of the Lachman fire. Firefighters on the scene <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2026-02-26\/la-firefighter-testifies-that-lachman-fire-was-not-fully-put-out-when-crews-were-ordered-to-leave\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">had declared<\/a> it was not completely out, only to be ordered by someone not there to roll up hoses and leave the site. Why wasn\u2019t the site monitored later if they wanted to avoid overtime? As reported in the <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2025-04-30\/lafd-union-head-massive-amounts-of-overtime\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Los Angeles Times<\/a>, the head of the firefighters\u2019 union more than doubled his base salary in 2022 with overtime payouts, not to mention the <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2025-05-05\/top-officers-for-lafd-firefighters-union-suspended-after-audit-finds-800-000-in-unaccounted-spending\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">reported<\/a> $230,000 in unsupported expenses.<\/p>\n<p>Who might be responsible for allowing someone to plunder the city treasury but Bass, and for what reason that the public would accept? She hasn\u2019t cleaned house at all except for firing the chief, who blamed her at a press conference. The whole story smacks of political intrigue. It would be dumb to reinvest with the same people in charge.<\/p>\n<p>Recall the <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lafire.com\/famous_fires\/1993-1102_OldTopangaFire\/1993-1102_OfficialReport_OldTopangaIncident.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">\u201993 fire in Topanga<\/a>, where fire engines showed up from all over the state and Malibu and the Palisades were saved. Where was the multi-agency effort this time?<\/p>\n<p>Larry Nelson, Brentwood<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To the editor: I just don\u2019t buy the premise that Mayor Karen Bass isn\u2019t responsible for the Palisades&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":800660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[6297,1582,276,29418,7129,12768,2961,149072,326214,19945,224,2444,5337,47667,326215,61008,17254,9260,39792,6620],"class_list":["post-800659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-bass","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-charge","tag-editor","tag-firefighter","tag-la","tag-lachman-fire","tag-larry-nelson","tag-letter","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-losangeles","tag-mayoral-candidate","tag-multi-agency-effort","tag-overtime","tag-palisades-fire","tag-scene","tag-site","tag-time"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116584533792596817","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}