The phones of thousands of people in eastern Altadena buzzed with a Los Angeles County warning: BE AWARE, just 30 minutes after a fire broke out on a hillside in Eaton Canyon on the afternoon of January 7. A terrible warning will sound in 40 minutes: QUIT RIGHT AWAY.
However, evacuation orders were not issued until early the next morning, more than nine hours after the Eaton Fire started, thus neighborhoods in western Altadena did not feel the same urgency.
It was too late by then.
The wind-fueled fire killed all 17 individuals who were west of Lake Avenue, a main thoroughfare that passes through Altadena from north to south. Among them were a 95-year-old actress from the heyday of Black Hollywood, an 83-year-old retired project manager from Lockheed Martin, and a 67-year-old amputee who died in a wheelchair with his adult son who had cerebral palsy.
According to an examination of the alerts and statistics produced by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office, 15 of the deaths happened in an area where the first evacuation order wasn’t delivered until 3:25 a.m. on January 8; the other two deaths were in an area where the order came at 5:42 a.m.
Concerns over the timing of the emergency alerts and whether earlier warnings could have saved lives are being raised by the disparity between west and east Altadena, according to local officials and citizens.
“Our notification system should have been going off long before they were,” Altadena Town Councilmember Connor Cipolla told NBC News on Wednesday, adding that there was not much time to take action. The devastation makes that clear. Half of our town was let down.
A proposal for an independent examination of the emergency notification systems was presented by two supervisors in Los Angeles County on Tuesday.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger stated on Wednesday that she wants to expedite an analysis for the wildfires that have damaged over 15,000 structures and killed over two dozen people throughout the region, even as the county assesses its reaction after any tragedy.
I am aware that there are a lot more residences on Altadena’s west side, which is the older area, according to Bargertold NBC Los Angeles. I am aware that the fire was spreading quickly, but we still need to find out what happened.
Although she warned that further alerts might not have prevented fatalities, she added that the victims of this tragedy deserved our openness and responsibility.
Following an article in the Los Angeles Times on the delayed evacuation notices in the Eaton Fire, she made a proposal that will be put to a vote at the county supervisors meeting next Tuesday.
“A thorough review will take months because it will require combing through and validating the call histories of the fire, interviewing first responders on the scene, interviewing incident commanders, searching and reviewing our 911 records, among other essential steps, including obtaining feedback from all relevant sources,” the county’s Coordinated Joint Information Center said in a statement, adding that it was unable to comment immediately on the factors that may have contributed to the deaths in the fires. A third-party organization can also be needed for that job in order to guarantee the integrity of the inquiry.
In addition to using electronic notifications, the county also uses media coordination, door knocking, and patrols with loudspeakers driving through areas.
According to Jill Fogel, none of it occurred in her area in West Altadena.
On January 8, about 3 a.m., she received a text from a friend north of Altadena informing her that there were flames in her backyard while she was holed up on Olive Avenue with her two small children and their father. The 43-year-old Fogel said she looked at the Watch Duty app, which provides real-time updates based on radio broadcasts from first responders, but she didn’t see any alerts that her neighborhood would need to evacuate.
Then she noticed flames outside her rental house. She claimed that a few minutes later, she received an alert directing her to evacuate. Her family hurried into a car and drove off after she told her landlord. Fogel claimed she heard no alarms and saw no police or firefighting vehicles as they left the area in a line of automobiles.
Fogel claimed that in the hours prior to the evacuation order, she became aware of how quickly the fire was spreading. However, she believes that authorities need to have issued warnings much sooner.
Fogel remarked, “I found it odd that the flames were so near and we hadn’t received a warning.” They should have informed us far sooner, in my opinion.
Fire officials said Wednesday that the Eaton Fire is 91% contained, more than two weeks after it started. The cause is still being looked into.
As the fire spread into Altadena and Pasadena due to strong Santa Ana winds of up to 100 mph, investigators have concentrated on a high-voltage electrical tower in Eaton Canyon as the possible source.
On January 7, the fire began at approximately 6:18 p.m. According to the PBS Warning, Alert and Response Network, which monitors public alert system communications, the first emergency alert was issued to Altadena homeowners east of Lake Avenue at approximately 6:48 p.m. At 7:26 p.m., people in areas of eastern Altadena nearer the fire received a more urgent evacuation notice.
At the time, the situation was defined as a fast-moving wildfire in your region by the Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management.
It can be challenging to determine when to issue fire evacuation alerts: If you issue them too soon, you run the risk of widespread panic, congested roads, and increased danger; if you issue them too late, you run the risk of people becoming trapped in burning neighborhoods, according to Joe Ten Eyck, a former chief at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
According to Ten Eyck, those choices frequently need to be made quickly in light of quickly changing circumstances.
Ten Eyck, who has seen the destruction caused by the Eaton and Palisades fires, also advised against making snap decisions in Los Angeles before understanding why certain places were not ordered to evacuate sooner.
Ten Eyck, who currently oversees wildfire training initiatives for the International Association of Fire Fighters, acknowledged that he could see why everyone was furious. However, there are other elements at play here.
According to Ten Eyck, they can include damaged communications equipment, restricted nighttime visibility, and fires that were spreading incredibly quickly under hurricane-force winds. “Evacuation orders are usually issued in the areas closest to the fire front, but authorities may not immediately recognize when wind-driven embers are sparking catastrophic new fires,” he said.
When the Eaton Fire broke out, Altadena artist Salom n Huerta was in his studio and his wife, Ana, was at their west side residence. He claimed that she never received any alerts, but by the time he got home, he could see the fires in the distance, so the couple made the decision to leave at around nine o’clock.
It was already awful. 59-year-old Huerta said.
Later on, he found out that a neighbor had been killed.Around midnight, Dalyce Curry’s granddaughter, who believed she would be secure, dropped her off at her house. Dalyce Kelley, her granddaughter, previously told NBC News that her grandmother might not have received emergency notifications and was therefore not aware of the evacuation order in the middle of the night.
Kelley stated that elderly folks simply do not use telephones. Not her.
Cipolla, a member of the town council, noted that many of the Eaton Fire victims were elderly and probably couldn’t have fled quickly.
He defended everyone by saying that the situation was extremely fluid and the fire was spreading quickly. However, it seems like something went wrong when you consider that 17 individuals died, many of them elderly and crippled.