Los Angeles County supervisors criticized the long-awaited $1.9-million outside investigation on government failures during the January wildfires as full of gaping holes after outcry from residents who say the report failed to answer their key question: Why did evacuation alerts come so late for so many?
“I’ve heard from many residents, some of whom are in the audience, who share that this report leads to more questions than answers, and, quite frankly, a lot of anger,” said Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents unincorporated Altadena, as the board discussed the report’s findings at its Tuesday meeting.
Nineteen people died in the Eaton fire, all but one of whom was found in west Altadena, an area that did not get evacuation alerts until hours after the fire threatened the area.
The report from McChrystal Group found, among other failures, that there was no clear guide of which county department was responsible for deciding which areas to evacuate. The responsibility for evacuations is split among the Office of Emergency Management, the Sheriff’s Department and the Fire Department, and none have taken responsibility for the evacuation blunders. The county also failed to consistently issue evacuation warnings to neighborhoods next to ones that were under an evacuation order, the report found.
The pushback by supervisors is notable because they commissioned the report in January and vowed it would get to the bottom of what went wrong. When it was unveiled last week, top county officials hailed it as a blueprint for improvements. But it almost immediately faced criticism from residents and others.
Despite the shortcomings, the supervisors said they were eager to implement the report’s recommendations, which included making it clear who was responsible for issuing evacuations and beefing up staffing for the Office of Emergency Management. The supervisors unanimously approved a motion Tuesday, to start the process of implementing some of the report’s recommendations.
One of the report’s problems, Barger said, is that so many noncounty agencies declined to participate in the report. Several California fire agencies including the Pasadena Fire Department, the state’s Office of Emergency Services and the Los Angeles Fire Department declined to provide information, according to the report.
“It is inexcusable and I would challenge any one of those departments, or any one of those chiefs, to look the survivors in the eye and explain why they were compelled not to cooperate, because that does lead to ‘What are you hiding?’” said Barger, who said she was “incredibly frustrated and disappointed.”
“We have very one-sided information,” acknowledged Erin Sutton, a partner with McChrystal Group. “It is the county information.”
Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said the consultants had been “unable to compel” other agencies to share their automatic vehicle locator data. The Times used county vehicle locator data earlier this year to reveal that most county fire trucks didn’t shift into west Altadena until long after it was ravaged by fire. The Times was not able to obtain vehicle locator data from any of the other fire agencies that were dispatched to the Eaton fire that night.
“We were out of L.A. County Fire trucks. We were relying on our mutual aid partners that were there,” Marrone said. “We just don’t have their data.”
The Sheriff’s Department has also yet to release vehicle locator data on where deputies were that evening. Sheriff Robert Luna said Tuesday that the department had dozens of deputies assisting with evacuations that night.
“We can absolutely do better, and we’re already putting systems in place so that we can do better,” Luna told the supervisors Tuesday. “They weren’t waiting for warnings.”
A spokesperson for the Pasadena Fire Department said the agency didn’t participate beyond providing written information because the “scope of the review was the response by Los Angeles County.” The L.A. Fire Department said it didn’t participate because it was outside the agency’s jurisdiction. The state’s Office of Emergency Services noted it was already conducting its own review.
“I too am frustrated by what I feel are areas of incompleteness,” said Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, whose district was scarred by the Palisades fire.
The 133-page report makes only one mention of deaths from the fire. Horvath said she felt the report failed to include the “very painful” accounts from survivors and should have delved into the issue of rogue alerts that urged many to get ready to evacuate even though they were miles away from fire.
Supervisor Holly Mitchell said she wanted to highlight the racial disparity of outcomes in Altadena, an issue she called the “elephant in the room” and one that was not mentioned in the report. Black residents of Altadena were more likely to have their homes damaged or destroyed by the Eaton fire, according to research by UCLA.
Residents feel deeply that their experience — receiving later alerts and fewer fire resources than their neighbors — is not reflected in the report, she said. “We have to figure out how to acknowledge that disconnect, not diminish it,” she said
Congresswoman Judy Chu, whose district includes Altadena, said in a letter to the board that the report left “unresolved questions” around evacuation failures.
“The report does not explain why officials concluded it was safe to wait until 3:25 a.m. to issue the order, or who was responsible for that decision,” she wrote.
Standing on a vacant lot in west Altadena, hundreds of residents said they were frustrated with the report.
“Officials have responded with unconscionable ineptitude,” said Kara Vallow, who said she believed the document “goes out of its way to avoid accountability.”
Speakers called for Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to investigate separately, questioning the independence of the report. Survivors held signs with victims’ names, while others questioned why alerts came so late for west Altadena.
Lauren Randolph, a west Altadena resident, asked why, if flames were near her home in Farnsworth Park at 2:20 a.m., her family nearby didn’t receive an evacuation alert until almost 3:25 a.m.
“I ask again — who was in charge?” she said.
She said she felt the report failed to look into west Altadena, where she alleged that 911 calls were ignored and evacuation notices came late, noting that the area was home to most of Altadena’s Black and brown families.
The report emphasized that the “fire front” had not crossed into west Altadena, where nearly all the deaths took place, until around 5 a.m., nearly two hours after the evacuation orders came for the area. But many west Altadenans decried the description, saying their homes started to burn long before then.
“That is not true,” Sylvie Andrews said, the crowd around her laughing at the assertion.
Shawn Tyrie, a partner with McChrystal Group, acknowledged Tuesday that the satellite images they used don’t provide a “definitive picture,” particularly in cases with extreme wind, ember cast and smoke.
“Those images are severely degraded in smoke conditions like that,” he said, leaving open the possibility that the fire was in west Altadena well before 5 a.m., as residents previously reported to The Times.
Many of the residents’ questions were echoed Tuesday at the Hall of Administration by Barger, who drilled down on the difference between the fire front, which didn’t cross into west Altadena until 5 a.m, and the ember cast, which started dangerous spot fires in the neighborhood long before then.
“For people I’ve talked to who lost their homes, fire front versus ember cast mean nothing other than there was fire in their community, in their neighborhood, burning down homes,” she said.
Marrone said he believed they should have taken the ember cast into account.
“With hindsight being 2020, we do understand now that we must evacuate well ahead of not only the fire front … but we also need to take into account the massive ember cast,” he said.
Marrone said repeatedly that his firefighters were overwhelmed responding to multiple fires that day. Firefighters battled the Eaton fire as hurricane-force winds scattered embers for two miles. Unlike the Palisades fire, the most difficult stretch of the Eaton fire was fought in the dark with winds requiring all aircraft grounded by 6:45 p.m as the fire was just beginning. This left first responders without an aerial view of the flames, reducing their awareness of the fire direction.
Marrone said they’ve made a National Guard satellite program available to incident command, so fire officials can see the path of a fire on nights when they have no aerial support.
“Like I said before, and this is not an excuse, this was a massive, unprecedented disaster that presented severe challenges,” he said.
Barger also questioned why there was such a delay between when fire officials first noticed the fire was moving west and when the evacuation orders were issued. According to the report, a county fire official in the field in Altadena said they suggested to incident command staff a little before midnight that, due to high winds, evacuation orders should go out for the foothills of Altadena, all the way west to La Cañada Flintridge. About two hours later, at 2:18 a.m., a fire official radioed that they saw fire north of Farnsworth Park moving west along the foothills.
The first evacuation order for west Altadena came at 3:25 a.m.
Marrone said incident command needed to validate the report before requesting the order be sent out.
“That took time — probably too much time in retrospect,” Marrone said.
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