Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles abruptly removed the city’s fire chief on Friday, seeking to end the increasing acrimony between the two officials in the weeks since a wildfire devastated the city’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood.
Ms. Bass said in a statement that she had removed Kristin Crowley, the chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department, effective immediately. The announcement came after Ms. Bass said publicly that she herself made a mistake in leaving the country and traveling to Ghana days before the fires broke out. For weeks, she has privately told friends that she never would have left had she been fully briefed on the scope of the threat.
The mayor pinned the blame for that lack of warning on Ms. Crowley, an assertion the chief has disputed. In the hours before Ms. Bass left on her trip, the chief pointed out, there had been numerous warnings from weather forecasters about dangerously high winds and dry weather conditions.
The announcement capped weeks of tension. Veteran fire officials in the region had claimed that the response helmed by Chief Crowley was significantly less aggressive and experienced than the department had mounted in past situations of high fire risk. Chief Crowley maintained that the department had been underfunded, which the mayor and city budget officials denied.
In announcing the shake-up, the mayor criticized Ms. Crowley for sending home about 1,000 firefighters who were ending a shift the morning the Palisades fire broke out on Jan. 7, rather than ordering them to remain on duty. Such a move was a preventative measure that other fire officials in the region took, and that was viewed as a standard — if expensive — precaution in cases of extreme fire risk. Ms. Bass also accused Ms. Crowley of refusing to pursue an examination of what the fire department might have done wrong leading up to the fires.
“These require her removal,” Ms. Bass said in the statement. “The heroism of our firefighters — during the Palisades fire and every single day — is without question. Bringing new leadership to the Fire Department is what our city needs.”
After Ms. Crowley’s removal, the mayor’s office said Ms. Crowley had exercised her civil-service protections and had decided to stay with the department at a lower rank. Her new duties will be assigned by an interim fire chief.
The removal of the chief comes as Ms. Bass, who until this year had enjoyed wide popularity as mayor, has been rocked by criticism of her management of one of the worst catastrophes in the history of Los Angeles. On the weekend before the fires, as red-flag warnings intensified, the mayor flew to Ghana, where President Biden had asked her to join an official U.S. delegation celebrating the inauguration of that country’s president. As the fires spread, she aborted her trip and flew back to Los Angeles on a military transport.
In an interview this week with a local Fox News affiliate, Ms. Bass said she would not have traveled farther than San Diego if she had been properly warned about the dangers of the fires.
She said the chief did not conduct “normal preparations” and added that the type of warnings she received from fire officials didn’t suggest that “something terrible could happen.”
In the immediate aftermath of the fire, the mayor said little in public about her decision to take the short trip to Ghana, and had largely refrained from criticizing Ms. Crowley. The chief, who was relatively new on the job, had been appointed just three years before by Ms. Bass’s predecessor, Eric Garcetti, at a time when the fire department was embroiled in a wave of discrimination complaints by female firefighters.
Ms. Crowley was the first female chief in the history of the department, and the first openly gay one. But the choice was opposed by many department veterans, who called for a national search and charged that she was insufficiently experienced. Fire chiefs are mayoral appointees in Los Angeles, and can be replaced by new administrations, but Ms. Bass kept Ms. Crowley on when she entered office in 2022.
At a news conference on Friday, Ms. Bass emphasized that she was not properly notified about the fire risk from Ms. Crowley.
“In the two-plus years I’ve been here, every time there was a weather emergency, or even a hint of a weather emergency, the chief has called me directly,” Ms. Bass said. “That did not happen this time.”
In the early aftermath of the fires, Ms. Bass said she did not plan to remove Ms. Crowley. After a British news outlet erroneously reported last month that the mayor planned to oust the fire chief, Ms. Bass pointedly asked Ms. Crowley to stand next to her at a news conference.
When asked on Friday what had changed, Ms. Bass said that she did not want to make changes while the city was actively facing a number of threats, including the fires and potential mudslides from rainstorms.
“Los Angeles was on fire,” Ms. Bass said. “After that, we had rains. I was not going to do anything while we were in a state of emergency.”
Lindsey Horvath, a member of the county’s board of supervisors whose district includes Pacific Palisades, said on Friday that attacks against Ms. Crowley about her gender and sexual orientation should be called out.
“Suggestions that her identity correlates to an inability to do the job are not only unacceptable, they are against the law,” Ms. Horvath said.
The Palisades fire was the first of two major blazes that destroyed about 12,000 structures total in Southern California last month. The mayor’s handling of the city’s response has continued to draw scrutiny in the weeks since.
The Los Angeles Times disclosed that she had agreed to let Steve Soboroff, a longtime developer, collect $500,000 to serve three months as the city’s chief development officer to help with the rebuilding. The money was to come from unidentified charitable organizations. After the arrangement became public, Ms. Bass said she asked Mr. Soboroff to do the work for free, and he agreed.
Her decision to dismiss Ms. Crowley drew sharp criticism from Rick Caruso, the Los Angeles developer who ran unsuccessfully against her for mayor and has emerged as one of her biggest critics in the aftermath of the fires.
“Honesty in a high city official should not be a firing offense,” Mr. Caruso said in a statement. “The mayor’s decision to ignore the warnings and leave the city was hers alone. This is a time for city leaders to take responsibility for their actions and their decisions.”
Ms. Bass said her office would lead a national search to find a new fire chief. For now, Ronnie Villanueva, who had recently retired after serving in the Los Angeles Fire Department for more than 40 years, will serve as the interim chief.