Karen Bass appears to have lied about her office’s role in editing the LA Fire Department’s after-action report on the Palisades Fire.
Last week, when it emerged that Bass’s office had seen the report before it was published, the mayor denied watering it down.
“Mayor Bass has been unequivocal for months — she reviewed an early draft of the report and only asked the LAFD to make sure it was accurate on issues like weather and budget,” a spokespersontold The California Post.
But as The Postnoted at the time, “weather and budgets are at the core of what went wrong last January.”
On Monday, our reporter, Jamie Paige, reported exclusively on the contents of the elusive first draft of the report — the one the mayor wanted to make sure was “accurate.”
She discovered major, substantive edits made between the first draft and the final version:
Those aren’t edits for accuracy. They are changes that shift responsibility away from the mayor to the fire department, and from senior officials to rank-and-file firefighters.
The mayor must explain why she apparently lied to the media and the public about the nature of the edits.
This is no longer a story about a natural disaster, or climate change. It is no longer the tragedy of one or two neighborhoods. It is no longer just a story about poor management and preparation.
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Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
