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Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park made her way through an auditorium filled with Pacific Palisades residents who had lost homes, schools and churches.
The charity event in mid-January was the first time many neighbors had seen each other since fleeing the monstrous blaze. They talked in anxious voices about toxic dirt and elderly parents. Some wore donated clothing.
Every few steps, Park stopped to offer hugs or advice.
“Don’t sell in haste,” she told one resident.
“I’m going to be with you every step of the way,” she said to another.
Park, who represents the Palisades area, has emerged as a empathetic leader in the fire’s aftermath, a contrast to her tough image at City Hall, where she is known for delivering steely speeches from the council floor.
In Instagram videos from her Venice kitchen, she cheers on residents while giving updates on tap water and power poles. At community meetings, she grieves with locals, alternating between tears and blunt talk.
“We’re government, so we’re probably going to screw up along the way,” she told the crowd at the Westside YMCA charity event.
As Palisades residents navigate a haze of bureaucracy, Park has become the face of the recovery for many of them. Mayor Karen Bass, on the other hand, was criticized for abdicating that role in the initial months, consumed with defending her overseas trip and blaming the fire chief for not telling her about the wind danger.
“The time to show empathy was right away,” said Dermot Givens, a political consultant who is not working for either Park or Bass. “Park has filled that vacuum.”
Park, 49, a former municipal attorney who speaks with the forceful cadence of a prosecutor, was at the command center on Pacific Coast Highway as the Palisades fire spread on Jan. 7, an experience she has described as watching a volcano erupt.
A roller coaster of emotions followed, she recalled, from “grief to rage” — the rage being the magnitude of a fire that destroyed more than 5,400 homes and killed 12 people.
“These are scars that are going to haunt me,” Park said in an interview. “They are going to haunt my community.”
Still, Park’s popularity could have a shelf life. The rebuilding slog will take years. She and other leaders are also facing questions about whether the city could have done more to lessen the destruction.
A Democrat who is the City Council’s most conservative member, Park launched her campaign in 2022 after growing frustrated with homelessness in her Venice neighborhood. She had never run for public office before.
Park supported the city’s anti-camping law, which some progressive groups view as cruel and ineffective, as a way to get homeless people off the streets. She promised community buy-in before building homeless shelters — a hot button issue after then-Councilmember Mike Bonin threw his weight behind a city-run shelter in the heart of Venice that many residents opposed.
The firefighters union backed Park with more than $400,000 and the police union spent more than $1.7 million to support her.
Park will represent Venice and other coastal neighborhoods, promising tougher stances on homelessness and crime than advocated by her predecessor, Councilmember Mike Bonin.
Park grew up in Downey and Apple Valley, raised mostly by her mother, a school secretary, after her parents divorced. She was the first in her family to go to college, and then law school, borrowing “every penny” for her education, she said. She focused on employment issues involving municipal workers and became a partner at Burke, Williams & Sorensen.
After she was elected, Park worked with Bass’ homelessness team to dismantle a long-standing encampment in Venice, relocating more than 80 people into motels, and liberally used the anti-camping law, including near a senior home, where noise from an encampment kept residents awake at night.
People living in RVs remain a contentious issue in Park’s district. But today, “there are no large encampments in Venice,” said Mark Ryavec, a longtime Venice resident whose neighborhood group has repeatedly sued the city over homelessness. “I credit Traci Park with that.”
Homelessness and the fire recovery are likely to dominate Park’s reelection campaign next year. Already, progressives are highlighting her opposition to Venice Dell, a proposed affordable housing development near the Venice canals. Park has suggested another site, which would delay construction, frustrating some City Council members.
Faizah Malik, an attorney with Public Counsel who represents groups suing the city over the Venice project’s delay, said the Palisades blaze has highlighted the city’s housing crisis.
“We want the same attention paid to affordable housing and protections to keep working-class residents in their homes,” she said.
The law would not stop the federal government from carrying out mass deportations. But it signals that City Hall is standing with its immigrant population.
L.A.’s “sanctuary city” law is another issue that divides Park and most of her council colleagues.
Last year, she told KNX News that the law — which forbids city employees and resources from being involved in federal immigration enforcement — “was really just an act of symbolic resistance” that could jeopardize federal funding.
Park cited the LAPD’s long-standing policy against its officers acting as immigration agents and told The Times that city employees were already barred, through an executive order, from immigration enforcement.
“I didn’t think it was the right time and the right message to send,” she said, adding that “nobody is about ICE raids” or “ripping abuelas away from their families.”
President Trump has threatened to cut off money to sanctuary cities, and L.A. is depending on millions in federal reimbursement to rebuild city infrastructure in the Palisades. Some of Park’s colleagues, including Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, are seeking additional measures to support undocumented immigrants, keeping the council’s fight with the Trump administration front and center.
Park often repeats the story of the stone figurines. As one of the few people allowed into the Palisades in the first days after the fire, she regularly came across garden ornaments or knickknacks that survived the flames.
“Personally, if I see a clay pot or a stone figurine and I can reach it, I’m leaving it where I think your front door was,” said Park, fighting back tears during a community meeting in late January. “So when you come back, there will be something familiar, not just a pile of ash.”
Palisades resident Kaye Steinsapir didn’t know much about Park before Jan. 7 but now watches her Instagram videos and sees her at meetings.
“Even if Traci Park can’t do something in that moment to solve someone’s issue, she is responding and interacting in such a way that people feel that their pain and their struggle has been witnessed by her,” Steinsapir said.
With mayoral appointees, consulting firms, nonprofit groups and council members all in the mix, it’s difficult to discern who will be in charge of what.
At a recent City Council committee meeting, Park pressed representatives from Hagerty Consulting, the city’s fire recovery contractor, to explain what work they have performed so far.
Unsatisfied, Park ordered the representatives to meet with Palisades residents, listing off the names of some who were present.
“She’s getting things done,” said Palisades resident Larry Vein, who runs the nonprofit Pali Strong. “She wants to see things get better. She truly in her heart cares about the people.”
Although Park and Bass praise one another — the mayor is a “good ally,” said Park, and a Bass spokesperson called Park a “fearless advocate” for the Palisades — the council member has repeatedly challenged the mayor’s decisions since the fire.
She told The Times in February that it wasn’t clear who was in charge of the recovery. Bass responded: “Let me just explain: The person that’s in charge is here. Me.”
Park also stunned observers on a Zoom call with Palisades residents when she pushed back on the mayor’s decision to reopen the area. Bass reversed herself the next day.
Crowley’s bid to get her job back was almost certain to fail, given the fact that she needed 10 votes. Her only support came from Councilmembers Monica Rodriguez and Traci Park.
After Bass dismissed Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, in part for declining to staff additional firefighters ahead of the extreme winds, Park argued that no one should be fired before official reports on the city’s handling of the blaze are finished. She was one of two council members who voted for Crowley’s reinstatement.
A Times investigation found that fire officials could have placed additional engines and personnel in the field as wind forecasts worsened ahead of the fire. Crowley has defended her handling of the blaze and accused Bass of making “multiple, false accusations.”
Even before Jan. 7, Park was raising alarms about the threat of wildfires, often as the loudest voice on the council supporting the fire department’s budget requests.
In December, she spoke before the Board of Fire Commissioners, a panel of Bass appointees that oversees the fire department, to warn of the dangers in her oceanside district.
“The threats we face from wildfires get worse every year, and the demands we place on our department only increase year after year,” she said.
Months earlier, she argued at a city budget hearing that the fire department deals with wildfires, medical emergencies and homelessness but is “still nowhere near a sustainable level of sworn personnel to be able to respond to any emergency at a moment’s notice.”
Chad Comey, 31, who lost the family condominium where he lived and cared for his disabled parents, wants answers from Park and others.
Why were the roads out of the Palisades gridlocked? Why weren’t there more fire trucks? he asked.
“I blame the city, and she’s part of that,” Comey said of Park. “Everyone should be fired — scorched earth.”
Park told The Times that the “rage” felt by residents is justified, reiterating that the official reports will reveal any culpability.
She stood firm on her long-standing position that the city needs more firefighters.
“More resources lead to better outcomes,” she said.
Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.
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