ABC7 obtains Mayor Bass' texts on early response to LA fires. Here's what they reveal

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Texts obtained by Eyewitness News are providing a glimpse of how Mayor Karen Bass responded in the first hours of January's wildfires in Los Angeles.

The messages paint a picture of a mayor anxious to get back from Africa and slightly frustrated with some technical troubles while leading from abroad.

What the texts reveal

On Jan. 7, it was 11:48 a.m. in Los Angeles and the Palisades Fire was spreading fast. Bass was in Ghana, seven hours ahead, when she received a message on her phone from Celine Cordero, her deputy chief of staff.

"On phone with Chief Crowley now. 2 significant fires in the city now. She will call you mayor," the message read.

Two more messages from Cordero said: "Hollywood. Pacific palisades" and "Potential evacuations. Significant resources."

"40 mile winds. 100 acres affected in next 20 min," another text from Cordero said.

At 11:23 p.m. Ghana time, Bass appears to be on a video call with staff as she texts, "I am listening don't know why you can't tell me."

She then corrects it to, "Hear me!"

Cordero responds with, "Oh no! Ok. No we can't hear you."

Hours later, California Sen. Adam Schiff texted the mayor.

"The fires are just awful. Please let me know whatever I can do to help," Schiff texted.

"Thanks so much I'm actually in the air headed home from Ghana...I know disaster aid will be needed...I land in the AM and would like to be in touch by late afternoon after I've had a chance to see what is happening," Bass responded.

Eyewitness News requested these text messages in the days after the fires, but earlier this month Bass said her text messages were set to auto-delete.

"My phone did an automatic-delete after 30 days," the mayor said on March 10.

But after using what the mayor referred to as "special software" to retrieve the texts, Eyewitness News obtained some of them.

"I am glad that they're now out there, and I hope that people can see exactly what I was doing," Bass said Thursday during a press conference.

Transparency advocates are also glad the mayor's texts are public, but some of them are still scratching their heads.

"They may have dodged a bullet in the sense that those texts were still recoverable, but they mayor should not have been auto-deleting texts in the first place," said David Loy with the First Amendment Coalition.

That's because, according to L.A. administrative code, most public records, which would include texts from public officials, should be kept for at least two years.