‘Have You Nothing To Say?’ LA Mayor Ignores Questions While Ripped Over Africa Trip | EUROtoday

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) refused to reply to a reporter’s questions on whether or not she regrets touring to West Africa amid intensifying excessive climate warnings in her metropolis, which finally led to essentially the most harmful wildfire in LA’s historical past.

Bass stayed tight-lipped for practically two minutes whereas being confronted by a Sky News reporter about her current journey to Ghana after touchdown at an airport Wednesday, video posted by reporter David Blevins exhibits.

“Madam mayor, have you absolutely nothing to say to the citizens today who are dealing with this disaster?” Blevins asks within the video. “No apology for them?”

“Do you think you should have been visiting Ghana while this was unfolding back home?” he continues.

Blevins additionally requested her about stories that she minimize town’s Fire Department annual finances by thousands and thousands of {dollars}. Though copies of the 2024-2025 finances revealed on-line present a drop in funds in comparison with the 12 months earlier than, Politico reported that the LAFD was later given further funding, which raised the division’s annual finances by greater than $50 million in comparison with the 12 months earlier than.

Jake Flynn, communications director for Councilmember Bob Blumenfield who chairs town’s Budget and Finance Committee, confirmed that element to HuffPost Thursday.

“At the time the Budget was adopted, the City was still negotiating [an agreement] with UFLAC (the firefighters’ union),” he stated in an e-mail. “It is standard City budgeting practice that, while negotiations are pending, the anticipated salary costs are not included in the departmental budget, but placed in the Unappropriated Balance (UB).”

Bass returned to Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon after attending the inauguration of Ghana’s president on Tuesday. She was a part of a four-person delegation despatched on President Joe Biden’s behalf.

While overseas, Bass first warned residents Monday of “an expected destructive and potentially life-threatening windstorm” that might hit the LA space on Tuesday. The following day, the identical day the realm’s largest Pacific Palisades Wildfire began, she declared an area state of emergency.

But her critics have argued that there have been ample warnings concerning the fires within the days earlier than she left for her journey.

Late final week, the National Weather Service’s Los Angeles workplace warned of “extreme fire weather conditions” from Tuesday by means of Thursday.

Those warnings intensified over the following few days, with the National Weather Service on Monday warning of a “life-threatening, destructive, widespread windstorm” throughout a lot of Ventura and LA counties.