More than a year after Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was criticized for being in Ghana while the Palisades fire tore through parts of her city, she was out of town again as Los Angeles faced another major blaze.
This time, Bass was in Chicago for the opening of the Obama Presidential Center. That is, notably, not Los Angeles.
Back home, firefighters were dealing with what KTTV-TV described as a “massive, multi-jurisdictional warehouse fire” in Boyle Heights. The fire was not a small flare-up. It was burning at a nearly 500,000-square-foot cold storage facility and raised serious concerns about a possible biohazard threat.
We are closely monitoring the fire in Boyle Heights. As firefighting efforts continue, smoke and poor air quality may impact parts of Los Angeles.
Out of an abundance of caution, please take steps to protect yourself and your family. pic.twitter.com/K28SLHvu63
— Mayor Karen Bass (@MayorOfLA) June 20, 2026
The fire broke out Wednesday afternoon. Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Jaime Moore said it appeared to have started because of a “solar farm” on the roof of the building. Crews initially believed they had the fire under control by early evening, but changing winds helped it spread. By Monday, firefighters were still working to extinguish it.
Moore said the building contained about 85 million pounds of frozen food, which made the situation especially difficult.
It’s interesting that Karen Bass @KarenBassLA promised she wouldn’t travel other than NY, SF, and DC but now has been caught traveling the world, even after all her lies and pathetic PR about how upset she was to be in Ghana during the Palisades fire
Karen Bass has got to go https://t.co/vrfgbMknqu
— KarenBassProgressReport (@KBassProgReport) June 22, 2026
“We have 85 million pounds of frozen food inside of this facility, and the way the building has been laid out, it’s very difficult for us to get in there because there’s zero visibility inside,” Moore said, according to ABC News.
“Our firefighters are not able to just go in there and start moving pallets.”
Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom both declared states of emergency over the fire.
“The city and county have opened spaces for families seeking relief from the smoke, and we will continue working around the clock and doing everything possible to put this fire out completely,” Bass said.
That statement may be true as far as it goes, but it also leaves out the obvious: the mayor herself was not in Los Angeles when the crisis unfolded.
NEW: LA Mayor Karen Bass says she’s investigating why she was allowed to go on a trip to Ghana days before the LA fires.
Investigating someone else for something you did is wild.
Bass: That level of preparation really didn’t happen. So it didn’t reach that level to me. No one… pic.twitter.com/k7DtUqIRJy
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 19, 2025
The Root reported that Bass was among the political figures present at the Obama Presidential Center ceremony in Chicago. The report also noted that she “quietly slipped backstage” during the event as she faced a difficult re-election fight.
That political trouble did not come out of nowhere.
Bass was sharply criticized in 2025 for being in Ghana during the Palisades fires. She had traveled there for the country’s presidential inauguration, despite warnings about dangerous winds before she left. When she returned to Los Angeles, she refused to answer questions from reporters about her absence.
The episode became a major vulnerability for Bass. She drew criticism from the left, including from Democratic socialist Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nithya Raman, and from the right, including from Republican Spencer Pratt, the reality television figure whose home burned in the fire. Raman and Bass advanced from the June 2 primary to the November general election.
JUST IN: Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass freezes up while getting absolutely skewered by a reporter for her horrible policies.
This is exactly how these people should be treated.
Reporter: “Do you owe citizens an apology for being absent while their homes were burning?”
“Do you… pic.twitter.com/IDMTiclsKH
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 8, 2025
Bass had also made a clear promise before taking office in 2023. According to The New York Times, she said: “The only places I would go would be D.C., Sacramento, San Francisco and New York, in relation to LA.”
Then she went abroad. Afterward, she said she would investigate why she was allowed to leave despite the fire danger.
That was already difficult to explain. A mayor promising not to leave, leaving anyway, and then calling for an investigation into how it happened is hard to square with basic accountability.
Now, with another major fire burning in Los Angeles, Bass was again somewhere else.
The Boyle Heights fire is not a routine incident. The Guardian reported that it could take several more days to put out. Air quality readings in Boyle Heights reached extremely unhealthy levels, and high particulate levels were recorded across parts of the San Gabriel Valley. Winds also threatened to carry smoke through the broader Los Angeles region.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency as crews continue to battle a fire that started days ago at a cold storage facility in Los Angeles. https://t.co/gHARDXflhW pic.twitter.com/qx7pqnXQbL
— ABC News (@ABC) June 21, 2026
Moore said the roof had been badly compromised, making it too dangerous to send firefighters inside.
“I don’t know that we’ll ever get firefighters inside because the entire roof has been compromised and it is sitting on top of [those] 65-foot towers,” he said. “It’s extremely dangerous, and I don’t foresee ever putting our firefighters in that type of danger.”
Bass may not be expected to personally fight fires. No reasonable person thinks the mayor should grab a hose and run into a burning warehouse. But leadership is partly about presence, especially during emergencies.
And for Bass, this is now a pattern. She once promised not to leave Los Angeles except for a short list of city-related trips. Then she left the country during a fire emergency. Now, as another dangerous fire threatened part of the city, she was in Chicago.
For a mayor already trying to survive a difficult re-election campaign, that is not just bad timing. It is a political gift to every opponent who wants to argue that she is not where Los Angeles needs her to be.
