LA Mayor Karen Bass says brother lost homes in wildfires shes been widely blamed for: Its hit my family too

Embattled Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass — who has been widely criticized for her handling of the historic wildfires devastating the city — revealed that her own brother lost his home to the still-burning Palisades Fire.“The loss that you’re going through, I share indirectly.It’s hit my family too,” Bass told a virtual meeting on Thursday, according to the LA Times.“My brother, who has lived in Malibu for 40 years, been through many fires, evacuated many times — this time didn’t get away.”Bass said her brother’s house was her “family home” where her relatives would gather during the holidays.With the loss came “a type of shock and grief that is trauma that will be with us for a long time,” she told to the 1,000 people members who attended the volunteer Pacific Palisades Community Council meeting.Bass was notoriously halfway across the world in Ghana when fires erupted in the city on Jan 7.Upon her return, she faced immense backlash for her administration’s significant budget cuts to the Los Angeles Fire Department, whose chief had warned the mayor that the lack of funding would leave firefighters ill-equipped to battle blazes of this scale.Since the wildfires, a number of eye opening scandals at Bass’s city hall have been revealed amid renewed scrutiny.The Palisades Fire, the largest of the incessant wildfires in the region, has been burning for more than two weeks, torching roughly 36 square miles of some of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the state, according to the latest updates from Cal Fire.More than 6,800 structures have been destroyed and at least 11 people have been killed in the Palisades Fire, which was 75% contained as of Friday morning....