Within a half-hour of a in the afternoon of Jan. 7, thousands of residents’ phones buzzed in eastern Altadena with a warning from Los Angeles County: “BE AWARE.” Within 40 minutes, a dire alert: “LEAVE NOW.”
But neighborhoods in western Altadena did not see the same urgency, as evacuation orders didn’t arrive until early the following morning — more than nine hours after the Eaton Fire began.
By then, it was too late.
All 17 in the wind-fueled fire were west of Lake Avenue, a major corridor that runs north-south through Altadena. They included an 83-year-old retired Lockheed Martin project manager, a 95-year-old who was an actress in old Black Hollywood, and a 67-year-old amputee who used a wheelchair and died with his adult son, who had cerebral palsy.
Fifteen of the deaths occurred in an area where the first evacuation order wasn’t sent until 3:25 a.m. on Jan. 8; the other two occurred in an area where the order came at 5:42 a.m., according to a review of the alerts as well as data compiled by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office.
The discrepancy between west and east Altadena is spurring questions among local officials and residents about the timing of the emergency alerts and whether earlier warnings might have saved lives.
“There was not a lot of time to do anything, but our notification system should have been going off long before they were,” Altadena Town Councilmember Connor Cipolla told NBC News on Wednesday. “It’s obvious by the destruction. It failed half our town.”
On Tuesday, two Los Angeles County supervisors introduced a motion calling for an independent review of the emergency notification systems.
While the county evaluates its response following any disaster, Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger said Wednesday that she wants to accelerate an analysis for that have killed more than two dozen people and destroyed over 15,000 structures across the region.
“I know that on the west side, the older part of Altadena, it’s far more concentrated, a lot of homes,” Barger . “We need to find out what happened, but I do know the fire was traveling fast.”
She cautioned that additional notifications may not have saved lives, but said “the victims of this disaster deserve our transparency and accountability.”
Her motion, which will be voted on at the county supervisors’ meeting next Tuesday, followed a on the delayed evacuation notices in the Eaton Fire.
In a statement, the county’s Coordinated Joint Information Center said it could not immediately comment on the factors that may have led to the deaths in the fires, and that a comprehensive 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, and searching and reviewing our 911 records, among other essential steps, including obtaining feedback from all relevant sources. That work may also require a third-party entity to ensure integrity of the investigation.”
Electronic alerts are one method for warning residents, but the county added that it also uses door knocks, patrols with loudspeakers driving through neighborhoods and media coordination.
Jill Fogel said none of that happened in her part of west Altadena.
She was hunkered down with her two young children and their father on Olive Avenue on Jan. 8 when she got a text after 3 a.m. from a nearby friend north of Altadena saying there were flames in her backyard. Fogel, 43, said she checked the Watch Duty app, which offers real-time updates taken from first responders radio broadcasts, but there were no warnings that her neighborhood might have to evacuate.
Then she looked outside her rental home and saw flames. A few minutes later, she got an alert ordering an evacuation, she said. She told her landlord and then her family scrambled into a car and left. As they made their way out of the neighborhood, joining a stream of cars, Fogel said she saw no firefighting vehicles or police cars and heard no sirens.
Fogel said she realized that the fire was moving very fast in the hours before the evacuation order. But she thinks authorities should have sent alerts much earlier.
“I thought it was strange that the flames were so close and we hadn’t gotten a warning,” Fogel said. “I thought they would have let us know a lot sooner.”
More than two weeks after it began, the Eaton Fire is 91% contained, fire officials said Wednesday. The cause remains under investigation.
Investigators have in Eaton Canyon as the potential origin, as fierce Santa Ana winds approaching 100 mph drove the flames into Altadena and Pasadena.
The fire started at about 6:18 p.m. on Jan. 7. The first emergency alert was sent to Altadena residents east of Lake Avenue at about 6:48 p.m., according to the , which tracks public alert system messages. A more urgent message to evacuate was sent to residents in parts of eastern Altadena closer to the fire at 7:26 p.m.
The Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management described the scenario at the time as a “fast moving wildfire in your area.”
Joe Ten Eyck, a former chief at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said it can be difficult to get the timing of fire evacuation alerts right: Issue them too soon, and you risk mass panic, jammed roadways and more danger, but issue them too late, and you risk people getting stuck in burning neighborhoods.
Those decisions often must be made in an instant, Ten Eyck said, based on rapidly evolving conditions.
Ten Eyck, who has visited the scenes of devastation wrought by the Eaton and Palisades fires, also cautioned against rushing to judgment in Los Angeles without knowing why some areas did not get evacuation orders earlier.
“I can certainly understand why everybody is upset,” said Ten Eyck, who now runs wildfire training programs for the International Association of Fire Fighters. “But there are a lot of factors involved in this.”
Those can include flames that were advancing extraordinarily fast under hurricane-force winds, limited nighttime visibility and damaged communications equipment, Ten Eyck said. He noted that authorities typically issue evacuations in areas closest to the front of a fire, but they may not immediately recognize when wind-driven embers are sparking catastrophic new fires.
Salomón Huerta, an Altadena artist, was at his studio while his wife, Ana, was at their home on the west side when the Eaton Fire erupted. She never got any alerts, he said, but by the time he returned home, he could see the fires in the distance, and the couple decided to evacuate around 9 p.m.
“It was bad already,” Huerta, 59, said.
He later learned a neighbor was killed. was dropped off at her home around midnight by her granddaughter who thought she would be safe. Her granddaughter, Dalyce Kelley, previously told NBC News that it was possible her grandmother didn’t receive emergency alerts and was unaware of the middle-of-the-night evacuation order.
“Elderly people, they just don’t get into cellphones,” Kelley said. “Not her.”
Many of the victims of the Eaton Fire were elderly and likely unable to evacuate quickly, Cipolla, the town councilmember, added.
“In everyone’s defense, it was a rapidly moving fire and a very fluid situation,” he said. “But when you take into account 17 people lost their lives, a lot of them disabled and elderly, it feels like something failed.”
