Bass faces backlash over allegations she led ‘watering down’ of fire report

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass faced backlash Wednesday, prompted by a published story saying she directed the watering down of an after-action report that detailed alleged failings of the Los Angeles Fire Department during last year’s deadly Palisades fire.

Bass has vehemently denied the story, which was published in Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times. In response to the reports, real-estate developer Rick Caruso said he was reconsidering a bid for mayor.

The Times, quoting “two sources with knowledge of Bass’ office,” reported that after receiving an early draft of the after-action report, the mayor told then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva that the report could result in legal liabilities for those failures.

Bass held onto the original draft until after changes were made, the story said. It was unclear whether Villanueva or other LAFD officials, or anyone in the mayor’s office, made “line-by-line edits” at Bass’ specific instructions or if they imposed changes after receiving a general direction from the mayor.

Bass’ office said the mayor and her staff made no changes to the drafts, and that Bass reviewed an early draft of the report and asked only that the LAFD make sure it was accurate on issues such as weather and budget.

Later Wednesday, Bass spoke on KNX News (1070 AM and 97.1 FM) and said the story was “absolutely false, 100%.”

“Just think about it for a minute,” Bass said. “I’m the one who ordered the after-action report when the fire chief would not do it. I fired her. Why would I water down a report that essentially presented the information for why I fired her? That makes no sense.”

Meanwhile, Caruso, who lost the mayoral election to Bass four years ago and who said recently he would not make another run at City Hall, said in an interview with KNX on Wednesday evening that he will need to process Wednesday’s news before he makes a decision on another mayoral run, but he did not rule out reentering the 2026 race.

“I’m worried about the city,” Caruso told KNX. “There’s no secret how much I love the city.”

“I need to spend some time thinking about this,” Caruso added. “It’s very fresh news. I’ve gotten a lot of calls today, as you can imagine, and there’s been a lot of posts on X and other places asking me to jump back in. I’m honored by that, but let’s give me some time.”

Caruso does not have much time to make such a decision. The deadline to file a declaration of intention for the June primary election is noon Saturday.

“For months, we’ve been talking about what has been labeled ‘Firegate,’ ” he said. “Now the city has attempted to cover up their failures in responding to the fire, and now we clearly know that this failure goes directly to Mayor Bass, which is, you know, beyond unacceptable, because you take an oath in office as a mayor to protect.

“The intent of this report is to learn from the mistakes, understand the mistakes that were made, be honest about the mistakes that were made, just so it doesn’t happen again.”