Within half an hour of the Jan. 7 afternoon fire on Eaton Canyon, the phones of thousands of residents in East Altadena were ringing with a warning from Los Angeles County: “Be aware.” Within 40 minutes, a dire alert: “Leave now.”
But neighborhoods in west Altadena didn’t see it so soon, as evacuation orders didn’t arrive until the next morning – more than nine hours after the Eaton fire started.
By then it was too late.
All 17 people who died in the air-fueled fire were west of Lake Avenue, a major thoroughfare that runs north-south through Altadena. They include an 83-year-old retired Lockheed Martin project manager, a 95-year-old who was an actress in the old black Hollywood, and a 67-year-old amputee who used a wheelchair and died with his adult son from cerebral palsy.
Fifteen of these deaths occurred in an area where the first evacuation order had not been sent until 3:25 a.m. on January 8. The other two occurred in the area where the order came in at 5:42 a.m., according to a review of alerts and data compiled by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office.
The gap between west and east Altadena is raising questions among local officials and residents about the timing of emergency alerts and whether earlier warnings have saved lives.
“There wasn’t much time to do anything, but our notification system should have gone off long before they did,” Altadena Town Council member Connor Cipolla told NBC News on Wednesday. “It’s clearly devastation. It’s failed half our city.
On Tuesday, two Los Angeles County supervisors filed a motion calling for an independent review of the emergency notification system.
As the county reviews its response after any disaster, Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger said Wednesday she wants to speed up the analysis of wildfires that have killed more than two dozen people across the region. and destroyed more than 15,000 structures.
“I know on the west side, the older part of Altadena, it’s more concentrated, a lot of houses,” Barger said. told NBC Los Angeles. “We need to find out what happened, but I know the fire was moving fast.”
He warned that additional information may not save lives, but said “the victims of this disaster deserve our transparency and accountability.”
His motion, which will be voted on at the county supervisors’ meeting next Tuesday, is followed by a The Los Angeles Times reports On late evacuation notices in the Eton fire.
In a statement, the county’s Coordinated Joint Information Center said it could not immediately comment on the factors that led to the fire’s deaths, and that a comprehensive review “will take months because of the call for it.” This will require finding and verifying the history of the fire, interviewing first responders at the scene, interviewing incident commanders, and searching and reviewing our 911 records, including Other necessary steps, including obtaining feedback from all relevant sources, may also require a third party to ensure the integrity of the investigation.
Electronic alerts are one way to warn residents, but the county added that it also uses door knocking, patrols with loudspeakers and driving through neighborhoods and media coordination.
Jill Fogel said nothing like that happened in her part of West Altadena.
She was hunting with her two young children and their father on Olive Avenue on Jan. 8 when she got a call just after 3 a.m. from a close friend north of Altadena that her backyard was on fire. is Fogle, 43, said he checked the Watch Duty app, which offers real-time updates taken from radio broadcasts from first responders, but there were no warnings to evacuate his neighborhood.
Then he looked outside his rented house and saw flames. A few minutes later, he said, he received an alert ordering an evacuation. He told his landlord and then his family got into a car and drove away. As they drove out of the neighborhood, joining a stream of cars, Fogle said he didn’t see any firefighting vehicles or police cars or hear any sirens.
Fogle said he realized the fire was growing rapidly within hours of the evacuation order. But she believes the authorities should have sent an alert much earlier.
“I thought it was strange that the flames were so close and we had no warning,” Fogel said. “I thought they’d let us know pretty quickly.”
Two weeks after it started, the Eaton Fire is 91 percent contained, fire officials said Wednesday. The cause is under investigation.
Investigators focused on a high-voltage electrical tower in Eaton Canyon as 100 mph Santa Ana winds fanned flames as far as Altadena and Pasadena.
The fire started at around 6:18 pm on January 7. PBS Warning, Alert and Response Networkwhich tracks public alert system messages. At 7:26 p.m., a more urgent message was sent to residents in parts of East Altadena near the fire to evacuate.
The Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management described the scene at the time as “a rapidly expanding wildfire in your area.”
Joe Ten Eck, former chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said that getting fire evacuation warnings right can be tricky: Issue them too soon, and you’ll end up with mass panic, road jams, and more. And there’s the risk of more hazards, but release them too late, and you risk trapping people in burning neighborhoods.
Ten Eyck said these decisions often have to be made in a moment based on rapidly changing circumstances.
Ten Eck, who has visited the scenes of devastation in the Eaton and Palisades fires, cautioned against rushing to judgment in Los Angeles without knowing why some areas did not receive evacuation orders first.
“I can definitely understand why everyone is worried,” said Ten Eck, who now runs wildfire training programs for the International Association of Fire Fighters. “But there are many factors involved.”
These may include flames that were moving unusually fast under hurricane-force winds, limiting visibility at night and damaging communications equipment, Ten Eck said. He noted that officials typically issue evacuations in areas closest to a fire front, but they may not immediately recognize when wind-blown embers are sparking devastating new fires.
Salomon Huerta, an artist from Altadena, was in his studio while his wife Ana was at their home on the west side when the Eaton fire broke out. He said he never received a warning, but when he returned home, he saw the fire in the distance, and the couple decided to leave around 9 p.m.
“It was already bad,” Horta, 59, said.
Later he learns that a neighbor has been killed. Delys Curry, 95, was dropped off at her home around midnight by her granddaughter who believed she would be safe. Her granddaughter, Delys Kelly, previously told NBC News that it’s possible her grandmother didn’t receive emergency warnings and was unaware of the midnight evacuation order.
“Elderly people, they just don’t get into cell phones,” Kelly said. “Not that.”
Cipolla, the town council member, added that many of the victims of the Eaton fire were elderly and likely unable to get out quickly.
“In everybody’s defense, it was a fast-moving fire and a very fluid situation,” he said. “But when you lose the lives of 17 people, many of them disabled and elderly, it feels like something has failed.”
