As the Palisades fire exploded in Los Angeles on Jan. 7, Mayor Karen Bass was posing for photos at an embassy cocktail party in Ghana, pictures posted on social media show.
By the time she departed the gathering for her flight home, massive plumes of smoke were visible across a wide swath of the city.
Bass was in the West African nation as part of a Biden administration delegation to the inauguration of Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama, which she had attended earlier in the day. She traveled abroad on Jan. 4 as the National Weather Service intensified warnings about a coming windstorm and arrived back in Los Angeles at around 11 a.m. on Jan. 8, more than 24 hours after the fires ignited.
A spokesperson for the mayor said the U.S. Ambassador to Ghana hosted the reception for the delegation before the group departed for the United States on a military plane. Bass spent most of the party making calls in a separate room, he said.
Bass’ decision to leave the city amid the weather warning and the timing of her return have been heavily scrutinized in recent days, drawing ire and national media coverage.
Bass appeared to have been posing for photos at the party just before 8 p.m. Ghanaian time the day the fire ignited, or just before 12 p.m. in Los Angeles, according to a photo posted on social media where a partygoer’s watch is visible. (Accra, Ghana is 8 hours ahead of Los Angeles.)
Evacuation orders were issued in the Palisades minutes later.
The photo was posted on Instagram and LinkedIn by Marissa Bowman, a city staffer who was not part of the official delegation.
“The presidential delegation was hosted by the United States ambassador to Ghana on the way to the plane,” said Bass spokesperson Zach Seidl, referencing the military flight that Bass took from Accra to Washington, D.C., before she boarded a commercial flight to Los Angeles. “For the majority of the time, the mayor was in a different room on calls from L.A.”
Seidl said the delegation left the ambassador’s house between 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. local time, departing straight to the tarmac of a military base where the mayor “was on her way back to Los Angeles on a military flight by 9:00 pm.”
That would put her departure from the party between 12 p.m. and 12:30 p.m. Los Angeles time Jan. 7.
Other photos posted by Bowman and Ghanaian emcee Nathaniael Attoh show Bass smiling, posing and chatting with attendees. Bowman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Attoh said the gathering was a decidedly low-key affair held to introduce the Biden delegation to some high-profile Ghanaians. There were several speakers, and the guest list included religious leaders, business people, diplomats, athletes, a few politicians and senior staff of the embassy, Attoh said.
The city’s emergency management department alerted Angelenos about the fire on social media at 11:22 a.m. on Jan. 7, writing on X that the Los Angeles Fire Department was “currently addressing a fast-moving brush fire situation in the Palisades Hills area” that already exceeded 10 acres, and warning residents to avoid the area.
Pacific Coast Highway was partially closed at Topanga Canyon Boulevard by 11:30 a.m. that same day, due to the fire, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
By noon that day, thick smoke was visible from across the city. The city issued evacuation orders minutes after 12 p.m.
In the days since the blazes ignited, Bass has been castigated for her early absence by her former mayoral opponent Rick Caruso and others. Pod Save America host Tommy Vietor wrote, “Inexplicable decision to not come back earlier” on X, and Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, who backed Bass in the 2022 mayoral race, told Puck, “If it is true that she left the country on a Saturday after the warning came out, that is a dereliction of duty.”
Staff writer Laura Nelson contributed reporting.
