Los Angeles Mayor's Aides Got Warning Day Before She Left the Country

LOS ANGELES — The day before Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass left for Ghana, her aides received an email from the city's Emergency Management Department warning of a "high confidence in damaging winds and elevated fire conditions occurring next week."

The mayor nevertheless went on the trip, attending the Ghanaian president's inauguration, as well as a U.S. Embassy cocktail party, on Jan. 7, the day the Palisades fire broke out.

Bass' team did not inform her of the Friday, Jan. 3, email, which advised of a meeting the following Monday to coordinate preparations for the anticipated high winds. In the days before Bass' flight, the National Weather Service had also begun alerting the public on social media about the growing wildfire risk.

Bass, over the last few weeks, has accused former Fire Chief Kristin Crowley of failing to warn her of the potential for a cataclysmic wind event. She told Fox 11 she would not even have traveled as far as San Diego had she been informed of the fire danger.

"It didn't reach that level to me, that something terrible could happen, and maybe you shouldn't have gone on the trip," she said.

Bass fired Crowley on Feb. 21, criticizing the chief's handling of the Palisades fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and killed 12 people. Crowley has appealed her dismissal, with a City Council vote on the appeal scheduled for Tuesday.

Correspondence obtained by The Times through a public records request showed that the Emergency Management Department was advising mayoral staffers of the weather outlook, in the Jan. 3 email and messages over the following days, as the forecasts grew increasingly dire.

More than a dozen Bass aides received the Jan. 3 email, which included multiple attachments from the National Weather Service. An EMD official also wrote that a "tentative calendar invite" to the Monday meeting would follow.

Deputy Mayor Zach Seidl, who received the email and oversees communications for Bass, downplayed its importance, saying it did not suggest imminent catastrophe. At that point, he said, the email was referring to a meeting that was tentative.

"That is not a warning of disaster," he said. "That sends the opposite message."

EMD spokesperson Joseph Riser told The Times that "tentative" referred to the exact date and time of the Monday meeting, not whether it would take place.

The Jan. 3 email was sent at 2:30 p.m. by Jillian de Vela, a duty officer with the EMD, to an internal group called "EMD Adverse Weather," which includes more than 100 officials, including firefighters, police officers, and Department of Water and Power and L.A. Unified School District employees, according to a list provided by EMD officials.

Christopher Anyakwo, who is Bass' executive officer for emergency operations, and more than a dozen other Bass aides are on the EMD Adverse Weather email list. The mayor and her chief of staff are not on the list, which was provided by the EMD.

The Jan. 3 email included a 10-page attachment with a National Weather Service forecast, which featured a graphic showing a large red flame icon and the header "Critical fire conditions." The graphic said wind gusts could reach 80 mph starting Jan. 7, which, combined with low humidity and very dry vegetation, created a major fire risk for L.A. and Ventura counties.

On Jan. 3, De Vela also directly emailed two Bass aides — Anyakwo and Jacquelyne Sandoval, the mayor's policy director for emergency management — sending them Zoom links to the Monday meeting, which was formally known as an adverse weather coordination call.

Seidl, in an email to The Times, said no one from Bass' staff told her about the information in the Jan. 3 email. He declined to say whether any aides advised Bass of the worsening weather conditions while she was in Ghana.

Seidl also did not respond to a question about whether the information in the Jan. 3 email raised concerns in the mayor's office or was serious enough to warrant canceling the Ghana trip. Instead, he repeated the mayor's assertion that Crowley should have contacted her about the weather.

"Before other major weather emergencies, the Mayor — or at minimum, the Mayor's Chief of Staff — has received a direct call from the Fire Chief, flagging the severity of the situation. This time, that call never came," he said.

Crowley has repeatedly declined to weigh in on the mayor's allegations in recent days, saying she is "extremely proud of the work" performed by city firefighters. Los Angeles Fire Department officials have said they followed protocol before and during the fire.

City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, a Crowley supporter, said the Jan. 3 emails — the group email and the ones to the two Bass aides — show that EMD officials were advising Bass' team of the potential for dangerous fire weather before she left the country.

"She keeps saying, 'I wouldn't have left had I known.' But her staff did know," Rodriguez said. "This verifies that her staff was notified of the potential threat by EMD, whose responsibility it is to let us know of these potential weather events."

The EMD, one of the city's smaller departments, monitors and distributes weather warnings to an array of agencies and elected officials. In 2024, the EMD organized 20 adverse weather coordination calls, according to the agency.

The mayor is responsible for supervising the EMD, according to the 2024 edition of the city's Elected Official Emergency Response Handbook. The department's duty officer, a position that rotates among staffers, is charged with notifying "relevant stakeholders" — including the mayor's team — about preparations that have been made before threatening weather conditions, according to the agency's 123-page adverse weather guidebook.

The duty officer collects information about weather forecasts, such as heat waves, atmospheric rivers and high winds, and may recommend initiating an adverse weather coordination conference call, according to EMD guidelines.

In the final days of December, the National Weather Service began conducting 1 p.m. briefings on the fire risk, inviting fire departments and emergency preparedness agencies from L.A. and Ventura counties.

The first "fire call" took place Dec. 30, followed by another on Jan. 2, said Susan Buchanan, a spokesperson for the National Weather Service. After that, the afternoon conference calls occurred daily, followed by a daily webinar for the media and others, she said.

On Jan. 2, two days before Bass' flight to Ghana, the weather service warned during its fire call of the potential for a "DAMAGING OFFSHORE WIND EVENT" in L.A. and Ventura counties and the "long duration of Red Flag conditions," according to a chronology provided by the weather agency.

The forecast included a 50% chance of a strong wind event starting Jan. 7, with peak gusts of up to 80 mph.

On Jan. 3, the chance of a strong, sustained wind event starting Jan. 7 had increased to 60%, with gusts potentially exceeding 80 mph.

On Sunday, Jan. 5, the day after Bass left for Ghana, forecasters replaced the red flame icon with a purple one, upping the fire risk to the highest level, "extreme."

That day, De Vela emailed the EMD Adverse Weather group, advising of the extreme fire conditions forecast.

On Jan. 6 at 11 a.m., the National Weather Service ratcheted up its warning again, saying on X: "HEADS UP!!! A LIFE-THREATENING, DESTRUCTIVE, Widespread Windstorm is expected Tue afternoon-Weds morning across much of Ventura/LA Co."

Three hours later, the meeting De Vela referenced in her Jan. 3 emails took place.

According to Seidl, two people from the mayor's office participated in the Zoom: Sandoval and press secretary Gabby Maarse.

In a seven-page summary of the Jan. 6 meeting, emergency management officials compared the coming winds to the fierce windstorm that battered the region in December 2011.

"This windstorm event has the potential to produce life-threatening and destructive wind gusts of 80 to 100 mph," said the summary, which was obtained through The Times' public records request.

That document listed storm preparations planned by various city agencies, including the Department of Water and Power and the Department of Recreation and Parks. The Fire Department was slated to "pre-deploy field resources" ahead of the extreme Santa Ana winds.

Bass returned from Ghana shortly before noon on Jan. 8, more than 24 hours after the Palisades fire erupted. She told reporters she took the "fastest route back," staying in contact with public safety officials as she traveled.

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