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February 25, 2025
Firefighters getting ready to fight a fire in LA (Photo Credit: The Washington Post)
The fires in Los Angeles were extremely devastating and persisting. Firefighters from all over California were called in to help fight them, but even with help from multiple other cities, LA was still understaffed in firefighters. The Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) was very underbudgeted; not long before the fires, LA MayorKaren Bass cut the LAFD’s funding by over $17 million while supplying the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) with a $126 million funding increase.
The LAFD has about a third of the budget that the LAPD has. Due to the lack of funding, the fire department had to remove multiple positions, driving it to be understaffed and unprepared for the fires. In spite of the fact that the fire department was being forced to get help from other states, the police department is one of the leading causes of financial issues in LA.
The legal payouts for the LAPD have been major. Recently, the LAPD had been held responsible for the death of a pedestrian crossing the street and a man shopping in Costco. The settling of these cases alone cost LA over 40 million dollars. Yet, their flow of money keeps coming while underfunded firefighters struggled to contain the fires that caused 170,000 people to evacuate their homes.
“The constant defunding of other city programs in order to give the LAPD billions a year has consequences, and these elected officials do actually have blood on their hands. The city is unprepared to handle this fire, and Los Angeles shouldn’t be in that position,” said Ricci Sergienko with the People’s City Council LA (The Intercept). Money to help the LA fire department get resources and staff to fight the wildfires had been going to boost the police department and pay for their lawsuits.
The budget for the LA fires were decreased by millions of dollars resulting in lost jobs and a reduction in money for training and education. Although the funding cuts that have been hurting the LAFD were originally made to decrease the city’s shortfall, the LAPD is not suffering at all, while other departments in LA bear the brunt. These cuts ended up affecting multiple different fire departments from other cities and states, and diminished the LAFD’s ability to fight fires. As LA supplied LAPD with increased funding, the LA fires burned over 57,000 acres and destroyed around 16,000 structures, barely contained by understaffed firefighters from cities and states all over the country.
Sources: Los Angeles Times, CNN, The Intercept, CAL Fire
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