LOS ANGELES — The crisis response team reporting to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass — with hundreds of trained volunteers and a budget of nearly $1 million — sat on the sidelines for a week while the city endured its most devastating natural disaster on record, The Post has learned.
The embattled mayor's apparent failure to quickly deploy these key support resources is the latest in a series of botched leadership decisions that have marked her response to the Palisades Fire, which claimed nine lives, obliterated thousands of homes and engulfed an area half the size of Brooklyn, New York.
The mayor's office did not begin putting volunteers to work helping fire victims until Tuesday — after The Post began asking questions about why its volunteers remained unemployed.
“This team is more well-funded than any other team in the country, and they are not responding at all,” one longtime volunteer told The Washington Post.
“I'm amazed by this.”
Days after the fires, volunteers were notified in an email from interim director Edward Alamo, obtained by The Post, that their services had not been requested.
In a follow-up email, program director Annie Vecchione reiterated to volunteers: “At this time, we are not deploying to shelters or community resource centers.”
Both Alamo and Vicchione declined to comment.
Joseph Avalos, who served as director of the mayor's crisis response team for 13 years until Bass fired him last May, told The Washington Post that he was “shocked” that the team did not receive a callout, usually a text, voice message and email. . To its 250 members.
“Then I received some phone calls from current CRT members saying they were still on standby and not participating yet. Honestly, I don’t understand why.”
Amid the fires, many volunteers continued to receive text notifications to deploy to smaller tragedies like traffic accidents — but nothing for fire victims.
Avalos said a large recall was necessary for major incidents to quickly determine who was available to intervene and when.
LAFD spokeswoman Margaret Stewart also said she was not aware of CRT being put into effect by the mayor's office.
The Los Angeles Mayor's Crisis Response Team was created in 1992 to work with victims of fires, crimes and other incidents, according to the CRT website.
The group has previously responded to major tragedies such as the 2023 Monterey Park mass shooting.
Its trained volunteers provide “immediate, immediate practical and emotional support to survivors,” according to the CRT website.
Team members are trained in everything from preparing evacuation centers to providing psychological first aid to survivors.
The Palisades and Eaton fires, which broke out on January 7, killed at least 25 people and damaged or destroyed more than 10,000 homes and businesses.
“The Mayor's Crisis Response Team should have been deployed to this incident due to the multiple deaths they had,” said former LAFD Battalion Chief Rick Crawford.
“The mayor doesn’t have to wait for the request, he has every authority to deploy them at his discretion,” noted Crawford, who left the LAFD earlier this year and is now the emergency and crisis management coordinator at the U.S. Capitol.
The volunteer organization operates out of the Mayor's Office of Public Safety – reporting to Los Angeles Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Brian Williams.
However, Williams was placed on administrative leave in late December after the FBI raided his home over a bomb threat against the City Council.
CRT also does not have a permanent director, although job advertising has increased in the past year.
Christopher Anyako, a Williams employee, denied sidelining the organization, saying: “The CRT team is currently helping out at the disaster recovery centre.”
However, he did not explain why emails were sent to volunteers stating that the group had not been activated.
A Bass spokesman said the team was “now” working at the disaster recovery center – but did not specify when volunteers were mobilized.
“We are grateful that they have answered our call to serve,” the statement said.
