[Free Press] The first job of the government is to keep people safe. Failing that, its job is to show that someone is in charge when crisis erupts. On 9/11, there was nothing then—Mayor Rudy Giuliani could do to keep the World Trade Center from falling. Yet he became, in that long-ago era, the most popular person in America by staying on the scene and leading at his city’s moment of greatest danger.
That brings us to the fires in Los Angeles—the most devastating in the history of the city, with a reported 27,000 acres burned and the fires mostly uncontained. There, authorities have failed not only at protecting its residents but at inspiring confidence that they had the situation in hand.
We start with Mayor Karen Bass. As the Palisades fire began to consume wide swaths of America’s second-largest city, she was in Ghana to watch the inauguration of that country’s new president.
Bass left Los Angeles on Saturday—two days after the National Weather Service warned that strong winds and "extreme fire weather conditions" would soon threaten the city. On Sunday, the NWS announced a fire weather watch. By Monday, the warnings had become much more urgent, with the NWS tweeting in all-caps that "A LIFE-THREATENING, DESTRUCTIVE, Widespread Windstorm" would hit L.A. imminently. |