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Los Angeles County Emergency Management Officers responsible for sending evacuation alerts have not been instructed to notify West Altadena residents for a long time since Eaton Fire was barreled into the area.
County fire or sheriff’s officials apparently hadn’t moved the alert, causing many Western Altadena residents to escape with flames and a terrifying swirl shut around.
All 17 deaths from the Eton Fire occurred west of Lake Avenue. There, residents were not given an evacuation order until around 3:30am in January.
The neighbourhood east of the lake was close to where the fire began, and was given the first evacuation warning at about 6:40pm on January 7th and continued to receive alerts throughout the evening.
Both sections of the town in the unintegrated portion of LA County were devastated by the flames.
Previously, it was unclear whether the Emergency Management Agency, which sent three different fire evacuation orders to one person that night in a new alert system, was warned that West Altadena was on fire but could not send evacuation orders.
Two county officials said emergency management staff were not told to issue an evacuation order until an alert was issued at 3:30am.
Fire, sheriffs and emergency management personnel worked together at Rose Bowl’s Unified Command Center on fire night. All three agents declined to make comments or leader interviews available, citing ongoing investigations into evacuation delays by outside company McChrystal Group.
County officials say the fire and sheriff’s department shares the responsibility to decide where evacuation should take place and communicate that information to emergency management officials. However, they have not explained who should be aware of the dangers to Western Altadena or why evacuation orders were not issued previously.
Kevin McGowan, director of the Emergency Management Bureau, previously told The Times that the McChrystal Group report will be released once it is completed.
LA County Sheriff Robert Luna said in an interview that his employees are part of the decision-making process but will be postponed to fire officials on which areas to be evacuated. Sheriff’s deputies usually focus on implementing evacuation decisions, he said.
“We’re part of the decision, but they’re the lead,” Luna said of the county fire department.
LA County Fire Chief Anthony Malone and other top firefighters said their commanders worked with other agencies to recommend evacuation zones as the Eton Fire spread.
From the beginning, the LA County Fire Department was in a “uniform command” with the Angeles National Forest and the Pasadena Fire Department. It then expanded to include the LA County Sheriff’s Office, the federal incident management team, and other nearby fire agencies.
Marrone previously emphasized that firefighters on the ground did not play a role that night in determining which area to which evacuation warnings or orders were received. He praised the crew, along with the sheriff’s deputies, for helping around 500 people escape the house.
“I’m knocking on wood, but if it’s a fire department’s failure, I’ll own it,” Marrone said in an interview in January.
The delay in evacuation orders could be the result of a breakdown in communication as Hurricane Force winds throw embers at neighbourhoods and aircraft grounded by the wind.
It is also possible that fire and sheriff’s officials did not notice that the Western Altadena belt was engulfed in flames at night.
Marrone repeatedly said that the firefighters were overwhelmed by the scale and ferociousness of the thin, thin fires that are fighting three different flames across the county.
A West Altadena resident reported seeing Roun County Sheriff’s deputies drive down several streets that ran through people to escape at about 2am, more than an hour before the 3:30am alert was issued.
Luna previously said that when sheriff’s deputies decide to evacuate the home, they will usually notify the Unified Command Center. He refused to say whether it happened on the first night of the Eton fire.
LA County firefighters poured it into Altadena when the fire broke out, but it is unclear how much they moved to Western Altadena as the flames spread. Some residents have reported that they fled their homes in West Altadena hours before the evacuation order comes and that they have not seen the fire trucks, even after the orders are issued.
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However, radio traffic shows that some county firefighters were aware by midnight that the fire was spreading west of Lake Avenue, deepening questions about why they had been waiting so long to order an evacuation alert.
The operations team, which served as intermediaries for radio communications between the Unified Command Post and the fire battalion fighting the flames, recognized at least half a dozen reports indicating that the fire had spread to Western Altadena hours before the 3:30am evacuation order.
Typically, a firefighter, an operational point person will work with the incident commander to maintain a map of the fire boundary. This is used by more firefighters to recommend evacuation.
At 11:55pm, county firefighters radioed in a fire reported in the 500 block of East Calaveras Avenue, the third report west of Lake Avenue.
“We have a lot of resources in that field and they do as much triage as they can,” replied a member of the operations team.
County firefighters called the fire at 780 E. Altadena Drive at 12:41am. Both reports were over a mile west of where the fire boundary was thought to be.
“It’s going west,” the operations officer said.
At 2:20am, the incident commander relayed a report from sheriff’s deputies that he could see fire moving west along the hills north of Farnsworth Park.
“We got a good landmark for that west,” the operational representative replied.
Radio operators at the county fire department did not discuss whether the area was placed under an evacuation order. Up until that point, most of the radio traffic had little discussion about evacuation and was dedicated to catching up when the fire was spreading.
When the evacuation orders came out to most of Western Altadena around 3:30am, firefighters continued radio on the list of growing homes as the Eton fire was under control towards the city centre.
At 3:40am, firefighters reported the operation on the radio and said they needed to help an older woman living west of Lake Avenue, referring to a recent evacuation order, to leave.
Some sections of Western Altadena, which were threatened by the flames, did not receive evacuation orders until nearly 6am.
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