At a news conference, Mayor Karen Bass said she and the fire chief, who claimed the city had not sufficiently funded the Fire Department, were in “lock step.”

Kristin Crowley, in multiple interviews, drew a connection between budget cuts to her department and the city’s struggle to combat the wildfires.

After a meeting so long that Mayor Karen Bass missed her Friday night media briefing on the crisis, Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley emerged still in the job despite blaming the administration's budget cuts for the failure to contain the raging wildfires.