A veteran Los Angeles-area fire chief ripped into Mayor Karen Bass her “failure of leadership” by taking a trip to Africa just days before the deadly fires erupted. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is conducting an ongoing probe that could ultimately determine who was responsible for the blaze. ”Responsibility for continuity of leadership and citywide coordination rests with the mayor, and in this case, that responsibility was not met.””This was not a failure of effort by firefighters,” Butler added. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), the committee’s chair, dismissed post-fire explanations from city and state leaders as a ”whitewash” and vowed to compel testimony and subpoena records to determine how Los Angeles and California officials failed to respond. Butler also alleged that official reports on the Palisades Fire were ”altered” to protect reputations – a claim Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley confirmed earlier this month to the Los Angeles Times.