The failure to send evacuation warnings to West Altadena early in the Eton fire was not a result of a technical error, according to a company that provides emergency alert software for LA County.
Until a statement from Genasys director Richard Danforth, it was unclear whether the failure was due to software issues, or whether county officials made a mistake and defeated the alert during a chaotic night.
“The system was up and running,” Danforth said at a Zoom meeting Tuesday that he was billed as City Hall for some of the company’s concerning shareholders.
The company, which provides emergency warning software to governments around the country, has been repeatedly found in headlines as LA County faces intense scrutiny over a failed evacuation warning. The county had begun using Genasys software a month before the Eton fire began on Jan. 7, Times reported.
All 17 deaths from the fire occurred west of Lake Avenue, but evacuations were not warned until nearly 3:30am. Meanwhile, the zone east of Lake Avenue had multiple evacuation alerts.
“Why didn’t these messages go? — we know it wasn’t technology,” Steve Sickler, Jenathy’s vice president of field operations, told me over the phone.
Brian Alger, the company’s senior vice president, said there was the longest delay between when the county issued a warning and when the phone was 14 minutes. The average was five and a half minutes, he said.
LA County switched from its previous emergency warning system to Genasys in the fall, spending $321,000 per year on software, according to a agreement with the county and company. The county moved quickly, offering new systems online, debugging software and questioning the amount of time authorities were allocated to train employees with new technology.
Sickler said he visited the county emergency command center the week after the fire broke out and found a system for sending “very sophisticated” requests.
“I know there was some speculation… were people trained? Were they familiar with the system well?” he said. “They obviously had a process.”
LA County officials told reporters that decisions will be made on when and where evacuation warnings will be made in conjunction with the county emergency management department, the sheriff’s department and the county fire department. The county hired an external consulting firm, McChrystal Group, to review how evacuation warnings were handled during the wildfire.
Local members of the council have also begun an investigation into why a purposeful evacuation order was sent across the county on Jan. 9 for residents near Kenneth Fire.
Danforth said Tuesday that LA County officials will use Genasys software correctly to draw polygons near the fire that only alert residents. However, the shape they drew in the software somehow disappeared after configuring the alert, and the system defaulted to sending it across the county.
He said Genasys has issued a temporary amendment.
“We were unable to replicate that error in the software. Is it our software? I don’t know,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll get to that soon.”
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