As Los Angeles battles its worst fire in history, fire department’s highly-paid diversity head is facing an inferno of backlash after a bizarre comment surfaced in which she appears defend DEI hiring by blaming victims.
In a video defending the department’s DEI hiring practices, Deputy Chief Kristine Larson — who heads the Equity and Human Resources Bureau — addressed accusations that female firefighters aren’t strong enough carry a man out of a burning building.
Her response: “He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.”
The video went viral on social media after the fire department was caught off-guard and ill-prepared when an outbreak of wildfires began to tear through the Pacific Palisades — one of the oldest and wealthiest neighborhoods in the city — last week.
The Palisades Fire, the most devastating fire in California history, has already incinerated 26,000 acres, including some of the most expensive real estate in the country.
Early cost estimates for all the wildfires in Southern California are $135 billion to $150 billion — which would top the damage from any hurricane to hit the US except Katrina.
Critics argue that LAFD had been too preoccupied with DEI vanity projects to properly staff and equip its firefighters — projects that Larson was paid $307K to manage in 2023, according to salary database Transparent California.
“Los Angeles Fire Department Assistant Chief Kristine Larson says when people’s houses are burning down, they want a firefighter to show up who looks like them. Hot take: People just want someone to show up who will stop their house from burning down,” wrote conservative influencer Collin Rugg in an X post containing the infamous video.
“It sounds like parody. People are dying and losing their homes, right now, because of people like this,” commented one user.
Meanwhile, another image has gone viral showing Larson standing next to two other women: Training and Support Bureau Commander Jaime Brown and Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, who is openly lesbian.
These are the only women on the 14-member senior leadership team, but they have become emblematic of LAFD’s diversity push.
“This is the leadership team at the Los Angeles Fire Department,” an X account called “Libs of TikTok” wrote alongside the image in a post shared more than 10,000 times.
The wave of DEI hires and diversity projects came after years of alleged harassment and discrimination within the department.
In 2017, six black members of the Fire Prevention Bureau sued the department for discrimination after they allegedly faced racially motivated retaliation for alleging rampant corner-cutting and lax oversight.
In 2021, a group of firefighters and social justice advocates called for the resignation of Fire Department Chief Ralph Terrazas over “rampant sexism, racism, harassment and abuse” — in the words of one veteran firefighter — especially against women, reported the LA Times.
Kristin Crowly was promoted to fire chief the following year — the first woman to hold the top spot.