Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley emerged from a meeting with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass saying she remains in her position for now, the Daily Mail reported, following an interview in which she called out the mayor's budget cuts.
Sources say Crowley hugged staff goodbye before going into the meeting with the mayor and that the fire chief is holding on to her job by a thread.
"Kristin was summoned by Bass this afternoon, about 4 p.m." a source told the outlet.
Bass reportedly cut $17.5 million in funding from the department seven months prior to this week's deadly fires.
A source told the Mail, "She was going into the meeting, telling everybody goodbye, because she was told the whole purpose of the meeting was to fire her. When she was summoned into the meeting, it was with the direct purpose to fire her.
"Whatever happened in that meeting, minds got changed. Either Bass realized it would be suicide to fire her, and came to her senses, or Crowley talked her out of it."
"She came back in the office briefly, told her staff, 'I'm not fired yet,' and went into a meeting with all her chiefs. She's still in that meeting with the fire chiefs right now," the source close to Crowley's office told the Mail.
Earlier on Friday, Crowley appeared in an interview with local Fox 11 out of Los Angeles in which she said, "My message is the fire department needs to be properly funded. It's not."
Crowley stressed that it was Bass' budget cuts that severely impacted the firefighters' ability to tackle the six active fires in the region.
"Did they fail you?" Fox 11's Gigi Graciette asked.
"Yes," Crowley replied. "We're still understaffed, we're still under-resourced, and we're still underfunded. Yes, it [the budget] was cut and it did impact our ability to provide service."
A retired Los Angeles Fire Department official spoke with the Daily Mail and said that he was shocked that Crowley would be so bold as to take down her superior in such a public setting.
"In my entire career, a fire chief has never thrown a mayor under the bus. It's unbelievable for her to go on the offensive like that," he said. The official added that the massive destruction and mounting death toll are causing the city brass to turn on each other as pressure mounts to explain the catastrophe."
"It was a brilliant move on her part. One of them's going to get taken out. Either they're going to go after the mayor or the fire chief," the former-LAFD top brass said. "Saying 'She defunded me, I didn't have the money' is a brilliant move."