Who was in charge?

When the Mayor of Los Angeles goes out of town, she temporarily gives up the powers of the Mayor. Automatically, the President of the City Council assumes the role of acting Mayor. This is how our government is designed, as codified in the City Charter, the constitution of the City of Los Angeles. When Karen Bass was in Ghana earlier this week, she wasn't actually the Mayor of Los Angeles. Marqueece Harris-Dawson was. He’s the Councilmember from District 8, and the President of the Council. Karen Bass’s trip made it Harris-Dawson’s job to direct the City's emergency response to the Palisades Fire. At least, in theory.

Emergency preparation and emergency response in Los Angeles is managed by the Emergency Operations Organization (the EOO), which is run by the Emergency Operations Board (the EOB). The members of the EOB are relevant city department heads, including the Chiefs of Police and the Fire Department, the Executive Directors of the Airport and the Harbor, General Managers of the Departments of Transportation and DWP, and others. The purpose of the EOB is to coordinate the efforts of disparate administrative bodies during a time of civic crisis, like, for example, an earthquake, or a major wildfire.

By default, and in times when no emergency is active or expected, the chair of the EOB is the Chief of Police. But when an emergency is imminent, or actually occurring, the Mayor of Los Angeles usually takes control of the EOB and the EOO. In order to assume that control, in order to “activate” (per the language of the Charter) the City's emergency response through the EOO, the Mayor first has to issue a declaration of local emergency. This declaration is also a prerequisite for the City to request State and Federal aid to help in an emergency situation.

Karen Bass did not issue a Declaration of Local Emergency —because she couldn’t, since she was not the Mayor at the time, because she was in Ghana. Marqueece Harris-Dawson issued the Declaration, but for some reason he waited until Tuesday at 5pm to do so, after the fire was already raging out of control.

The fire should not have been a surprise. This alert from the National Weather Service, which was widely scoffed at for its amateur graphics (in retrospect, something maybe rushed out in a panic), has since become infamous:

This was the third of several alerts issued by the NWS over the course of several days, each one increasingly alarmist with its warning. On Friday, January 3rd, the NWS warned of “critical” fire conditions and “major” risk; on Sunday the 5th they warned of “extreme” fire conditions and “extreme” risk; and on Monday the warning was in ALL CAPS with multiple exclamation points.

Look at the timestamp on the ALL CAPS warning. 11am on Monday. When did the acting Mayor issue his emergency declaration? 5pm, Tuesday. During the 30 hours between the warning and the declaration, half of the Pacific Palisades was destroyed. During those 30 hours, neither the elected Mayor nor the acting Mayor was in control of the City’s emergency response apparatus. They couldn’t have been, because the Charter requires a declaration to activate it.

Harris-Dawson’s declaration references the ALL CAPS warning, with the same language at the ALL CAPS graphic: “WHEREAS, a life-threatening, destructive, widespread windstorm and extreme fire weather system is expected at least from Tuesday through Wednesday, and possibly extending through the end of the week.” Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but that verb tense is rather odd —the fire weather “is expected” to arrive. It had very much already arrived, and then some, by 5pm on Tuesday. The declaration reads like it was drafted on Monday.

Everyone I’ve spoken to inside City Hall says Harris-Dawson wouldn’t do anything significant as acting Mayor without first consulting the elected Mayor. That begs the question, how much did Karen Bass’s absence contribute to the delay in declaring an emergency and assuming control of the emergency apparatus, which in turn led to the delay of state and federal support? Who was in charge of emergency response during the crucial 30 hours between the ALL CAPS warning from NWS, when cars were being bulldozed off of Sunset Boulevard and the fire hydrants were running dry?

Because it wasn’t the Mayor.