As the first embers of the Eaton fire began to shower homes in Pasadena and Altadena, Calif., this month, evacuation orders went out within minutes. But one neighborhood didn’t get orders to evacuate for hours, after some homes were already on fire.
The consequences seem to be fatal.
Of the 17 people who died in the fire, all lived in an area west of Lake Avenue that was not ordered to evacuate until 3 a.m., according to the Los Angeles County medical examiner.
It was more than seven hours after other commands went to neighborhoods near the start of the fire, and hours after fire officials received reports that homes were burning in the area. Even then, some people said they never heard from authorities that they needed to get out.
“I am deeply concerned about the terrible loss of life in West Altadena,” County Supervisor Catherine Barger of the area said in a statement Tuesday. “There must be a full investigation into the life-saving emergency notification actions that took place on the horrific evening of the Eton fire.”
Among the dead was Delys Curry, a 95-year-old resident who was dropped off at around midnight by her granddaughter, who believed everyone was safe. About three blocks away, Anthony Mitchell and his son Justin called for help evacuating just after 5 a.m. Both died when flames engulfed their home.
Earlier in the evening, Diana Leib had prepared for a stormy night as the winds blew outside her Altadena home. But she was not ready to leave.
The power was out, but in his nine years living in the neighborhood, that wasn’t out of the ordinary. She had lit some candles in the living room with her 6-year-old twin daughters, and her face turned ashen when her husband entered the room.
“Diana,” he told her, “you need to look in the backyard right now.” A wall of fire was falling on their house outside.
It was 7:06 p.m. Officials wouldn’t issue an evacuation order for the area until 3:25 a.m. Wednesday — hours after the family fled.
“It’s all very disturbing,” said Ms. Leib, 39. “It could have been a lot worse.”
Similar scenes played out in Altadena on Tuesday night as the Eaton fire ripped through thousands of homes.
Residents relied on Facebook feeds, WhatsApp groups and text threads to warn each other to get out. Official evacuation warnings came primarily by cell phone. Many residents with little internet access or no smartphones are trapped in their homes, overwhelmed by a disaster they never saw coming.
“There were a lot of things about it that we had no control over,” said Irwin Redliner, founding director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. “Then there are things that bother me where we had control – like the warning system.”
According to Dr. Redliner, warning systems are often faulty. Notifications may arrive late or suffer from technical issues. Sometimes the messages are wrong or misleading.
“All of these issues were potentially playing out in L.A.,” he said.
Ms. Barger said she would work to find out what happened “so we have a complete picture.” On Tuesday, he proposed an independent review of the notification to West Altadena residents following a report. Los Angeles Times On delay in emergency alerts.
In an emergency, County Fire Department and Sheriff’s Office Incident Command personnel identify areas for evacuation. The sheriff approves them, and the county’s Office of Emergency Management issues evacuation orders through the emergency notification system.
Elizabeth Marcellino, spokeswoman for the Integrated Joint Information Center, a countywide agency that oversees news media response, said wireless emergency alerts are among several methods used to notify residents of the need to evacuate. was one of
“Receipt of these wireless alerts depends on factors beyond our control, including whether people had reliable cell service or whether their phones were turned on,” Ms. Marcelino said in a separate statement from the Office of Emergency Management.
The Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department referred requests for comment to the Joint Information Center, which provided a statement from the Office of Emergency Management.
Dr. Redliner said up to 10 percent of Californians may not have a working cell phone, and an average of 15 percent do not have access to broadband Internet. Not all people sleep with a fully-charged phone by their bedside with a loud ringer. He said these factors make the emergency warning system entirely based on phone notifications.
Ms. Curry rarely used her cell phone, and no evacuation order had been issued for Ms. Curry’s section of Altadena as of 3 a.m. Wednesday — when no one could reach her.
According to Mrs. Marcelino, the evacuation response included knocking on doors, loudspeakers and messages to local news media. He said the Joint Information Center planned to review its evacuation procedures.
Four miles east of Ms. Curry’s home, near which the Eaton Canyon fire broke out, Jeffrey was used to making evacuation preparations. During the September 2020 Bobcat Fire, on the other side of the Angeles National Forest, he and his wife were placed under a warning.
But during the Eton fire, his wife arrived home from work and urged Mr Keough to look outside, where the fire was burning in the valley above their house. He said he began preparing to leave at 6:19 p.m., and was backing out of the driveway at 6:48 p.m. when his phone rang with a message. “A wildfire is spreading rapidly in your area,” it read. “Be aware of your surroundings and keep a close eye on the situation.”
“It doesn’t say to evacuate. It just says, ‘Be careful,'” Mr. Cave said. “But it was consumed by fire, possibly, because the embers were everywhere, raining down on us. “
Jeffrey Schlegel Milch, director of Columbia’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness, said the decision to send out an evacuation warning was a “no brainer.” Elderly and medically fragile people may die during an evacuation, and there may be economic consequences for closing down an entire area.
And getting it wrong could reduce the effectiveness of future warnings, he added. (It may have happened in the following days, when Los Angeles County blew up phones in unaffected zip codes with instructions to escape.)
“There are so many factors involved in the decision to leave that it’s very difficult to piece together,” said Dr Schlagiel Milch. “Wildfire, in particular, is a difficult hazard. You don’t have the advantages that you have with other types of hazards in terms of better advance notice, better predictability.”
In radio calls between fire officials in the early hours of the fire, many said they had gone too far as the fire spread quickly and unexpectedly.
“I am reluctant to place too much blame on a very dynamic situation that is very difficult to control,” Dr. Schlegelmilch said. “It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but it wasn’t as good as it should have been.”
As the night of January 7 progressed, evacuation orders spread to other parts of Altadena. But for hours, they didn’t include the area west of Lake Avenue, until nearby homes were reported on fire.
Just before 1 a.m., fire officials received a call that a house west of Lake Avenue was on fire. It was about a mile from the homes of Mr. Mitchell and Miss Curry. At 3:51 a.m., “multiple structure” fires were reported in the area of the lab’s home, also west of Lake Avenue, half an hour after an evacuation order was issued for the area.
By the time the sun rose over the ruins, 17 people had died within a radius of about two miles. Many were elderly and others had disabilities, which made it difficult for them to leave quickly after danger became apparent and flames in their backyard.
Two weeks after the fire, the devastation at Altadena is still unimaginable. Palm trees, their bark blackened and their branches singing, tower over the rubble. All that remains on many blocks are demolished houses. A few houses that made it into ghostly, now uninhabitable museums of life forever changed.
Ms. Lab has gone home. The family managed to get out in about 10 minutes, escaping to their parents’ home in West Los Angeles with their important documents and two cats. Still, she goes through what she’s longed for — a sweater, her grandmother’s jewelry, the family portrait she painstakingly painted over the past decade.
But what she grapples with the most are the neighbors she’s lost and the thought of what would have happened if her husband, who usually works late, hadn’t arrived home when he did. Saw a fire outside.
“I’d probably put the girls to bed and not think about it,” he said. “It’s really disturbing to think about.”
