Exclusive | LA Mayor Karen Bass failed to deploy highly trained $1M crisis response team to help wildfire victims

LOS ANGELES — A crisis response team reporting to LA Mayor Karen Bass – with hundreds of trained volunteers and a nearly million-dollar budget – languished on the sidelines for a week as the city endured its most devastating natural disaster ever, 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 has characterized her response to the Palisades Fire, which has killed nine people, wiped out thousands of homes and engulfed an area half the size of Brooklyn, New York.The mayor’s office did not begin putting the volunteers to work helping fire victims until Tuesday — after The Post began asking questions about why its volunteers were idle.“This team is more well funded than any in the country and is sitting on its hands, not responding at all,” one longtime volunteer told The Post.“I’m stunned by this.”Days after the fires broke out, 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, the program manager, Ané Vecchione, reiterated to volunteers: “At this time, we are not deploying to shelters or community resource centers.”Alamo and Vecchione both declined to comment.Joseph Avalos, who served as director for the mayor’s Crisis Response Team (CRT) for 13 years until Bass fired him last May, told The Post he was “shocked” the team had not received a callout, typically a text, voice message and email to its 250 members.“Then I got some phone calls from current CRT members that they’re still on standby and not involved yet.Quite honestly, I don’t understand why.”Amid the fires, multiple volunteers continued to receive text notifications for deployment to smaller tragedies like traffic crashes — but nothing for fire victims.

Avalos said a large callout was necessary for major incidents to quickly identify who ...