Phones rang loudly throughout Los Angeles just before 4 p.m. on Thursday, warning people to evacuate.
The city’s Office of Emergency Management said the alert was sent “in error.” “The evacuation order remains unchanged,” the ministry said in a post to X.
Times staffers received alerts throughout the metropolitan area, from Long Beach to Echo Park and beyond, but the alerts did not appear to be based on distance from a particular fire.
“This is an emergency message from the Los Angeles County Fire Department,” the notice said. “An evacuation warning has been issued for your area.”
In the media room of the Los Angeles City Emergency Operations Center in downtown Los Angeles, the phones of elected officials, staffers and several reporters squealed all at once.
With her back to the huge glass wall separating the media area from the operations center floor, newly sworn-in Congresswoman Luz Rivas was in deep conversation with fellow new Congressman George Whiteside when she received an alert. shouted. to her 818 number.
Staffers had speculated that the alert was related to a fire brewing in West Hills until a reporter with the 310 area code said he also received the alert.
At the Village Chipotle in Atwater, customers and employees alike sighed and picked up the phone.
“Are you closed?” asked one of the employees who was slicing chicken in the back of the kitchen.
“This is a warning, not an order,” another employee responded as he read the warning. “If it’s an order, you have to close it immediately.”
Then she turned to her customer. “It’s black beans, right?”
The alert linked to alertla.org, a site that crashed shortly after the alert went out.
The City of Santa Monica responded with an X, stating that the notice did not apply there.
All residents of Los Angeles County received a radio emergency alert regarding evacuation of the county. There is no latest evacuation information for Santa Monica. Evacuations in Santa Monica remain unchanged. For more information, please visit https://t.co/BTF6UsEbYG.
— City of Santa Monica (@santamonicacity) January 10, 2025
A second alert was issued at about 4:20 p.m., and the evacuation alert was sent in error and was supposed to apply only to the Kenneth Fire, officials said.
