With the wildfires in the Los Angeles area still raging, a new exclusive report from the UK’s Daily Mail’s Perkin Amalaraj reveals that the Los Angeles Fire Department has, for some time, been literally begging the city council for funding to replace aging equipment and hire new maintenance staff. Those pleas went unanswered, and now we see the results.
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The Los Angeles Fire Department begged the city’s council for nearly $100 million to replace its entire fleet just two months before the deadly wildfires, DailyMail.com can reveal.
The infernos that are consuming Los Angeles have so far killed at least 24 and have displaced more than 200,000 people, and critics have been excoriating the city’s leadership for their decision to cut the LAFD’s already dwindling budget.
In a preliminary budget request for 2025/26, signed by Fire Chief Kristin Rowley, made on October 29, the LAFD asked for $96,535,000 to fund a ‘fleet replacement plan’.
The revelations come amid growing anger at the city’s Democratic leadership, particularly mayor Karen Bass, for its alleged focus on diversity and inclusion over emergency preparedness.
The firefighting force said in its request to the city: ‘Many vehicles have surpasses their expected service life, leading to increased maintenance costs, reduces parts availability and potential downtime.’
And in its formal proposal to the city in November, it requested $24,063,000 for ‘new fleet/apparatus purchases’.
Here are some of the things the City and County of Los Angeles did see fit to spend money on:
Fox News reported that hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on initiatives including $14,010 to the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, $190,000 to the Homeless and HIV needle exchange program, and $100,000 of county funds to pay for Juneteenth celebrations.
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So they cut money to the fire department, but they can spend money on the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, needle exchange programs, and Juneteenth celebrations. You just can’t make this stuff up; it would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.
Previously on RedState: Gavin Newsom Gets Nailed With a Brutal Fact-Check Live on Air About Fires
Karen Bass Was MIA When Wildfires Broke Out—Now Another Past Statement Comes Back to Haunt Her
Here’s the part I find baffling: My son-in-law, a paramedic and volunteer firefighter for a small Iowa county of about 12,000 people — the kid is basically Captain America — reports that his little, mostly rural county has just funded the purchase of replacements for one of their three modern fire trucks and all three of their ambulances. Between the county seat’s town council and the county, he assures me that the emergency services departments are a high priority and get what they need.
Would that Los Angeles had their priorities so properly in order.
The voters of California, in general, and Los Angeles, in particular, have some serious soul-searching to do. The state and city governments have, in this blazing inferno, failed in pretty much every way imaginable, and now we see that their priorities for funding were not only sadly but abominably misplaced. If this doesn’t change the voting patterns of a fair number of California, this kind of thing will just keep happening.
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The Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles. It’s just plain absurd.
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