In March 2022, Crowley replaced the retiring Los Angeles City fire chief who had 40 years of service with the department. Although he was Hispanic, there have been no women of any color who have been fire chief for the city. That chief had to deal with suspending over 100 firefighters who would not be vaccinated against Covid, difficulty in hiring new firefighters, and reduced budget. So not an easy job. I don't think the City would have appointed Crowley had she not been qualified with over 20 years of service in LAFD. The more likely DEI people were voted on the city council by constituents with competing priorities from the very poor to the very wealthy. |
Honey, don’t type that out to me. Go sing Crowley’s praises to all the troglodytes on X and Fox News, and here on this forum that have been screaming DEI hire for the last week. |
CA and LA a case study in when you go woke you truly go broke. |
I’m not saying that the fire chief is lying. The budget is likely publicly available so folks can look it up. That said, now was not the time to be bringing that up and if it came up there were better was to respond. There are budget realities and there are impacts from them. The fire chief, nor mayor, nor governor struck a match to start the wildfire. So trying to lay blame with any of them is pointless. There will be time after this is done to analyze what could have been done better but now is not that time. This isn’t a democrat vs republican thing. Its not a California against everywhere else thing. It’s a terrible situation and likely the biggest finding is going to be that a whole lot of historical and current decisions came together with nature to create a perfect scenario for destruction. We learn from that and try to do better. |
I was typing that out for those on this forum that have been screaming DEI hire for the last week. I can't imagine that someone who referred to a poster as "honey," could possibly by a troglodyte. |
Why state the obvious when you should be clearing the bike lanes on Connecticut Ave with the other Beta Biking Boys. You don't want to miss the glory of the Sunday Ride of the Lycra-nauts! |
SoCal Native here:
One massive issue brought up by the chief is that the number of firefighters has not increased in decades, but the incident calls have gone up by 50%. However, it’s long been known that the LA FD union strongly gate keeps who can become a firefighter. Even when I was growing up and still to this day, it’s widely known that you need to have a nepotism connection to get into the firefighting Academy. They also gatekeeper who can get into the training programs like EMT or volunteer search and rescue for your local community, that’s a precursor to getting into the firefighting Academy. The union likes the labor shortage because it means virtually unlimited overtime dollars. So I take heed with these complaints, has been strongly acting like a cartel in terms of its labor. Another issue is that looks like it. It’s heavily white and many of firefighters don’t even live in the state of California. Fly in from places like Idaho and Nevada to do their shifts and then they leave with their paychecks. If you’re familiar with the show, southern charm of the characters, husband is a California firefighter who lives in South Carolina! He flies in every other week to do his shifts up in Sacramento and then flies home. This is the root of the labor issue with the Los Angeles fire department and other fire departments in California. |
Apologies for some errors in this. I used voice to text and didn’t spellcheck. But I think you get the general gist of what I’m saying. |
Thank you taking the time to type this. I’m a proud union member of a different ( but very large) union. This absolutely tracks with what I know of unions, having been a member, and understanding the need for organized labor. |
Sounds like more blue state dollars subsidizing red states economies. |
You don't think red state taxpayers will be helping to bail out California from these horrific fires? |
How many times has California bailed out Texas, Florida, Louisiana, etc with their hurricanes? We are a union of states. The anti-California politicking is downright traitorous. |
We’ve never had a wind storm like that, at least in my memory. I’ve lived here since 2006. |
Presumably democrats are supposed to be better. And everyone agreeing that Trump is a liar with a bad tan is not going to resurrect those that died in these fires nor un-burn homes, property, historic buildings and public facilities. |
Not any more. Dollars only travel one directions from blue to the red socialist states. |