911 records reviewed by MISRYOUM USA News show Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies evacuated one west Altadena resident just after 11:30 p.m. on the night the Eaton fire broke out—yet formal evacuation alerts for the wider area did not arrive until about 3:2
Just after 11:30 p.m. on the night the Eaton fire broke out, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy responded to a fire-related 911 call from a home on Glenrose Avenue near Loma Alta Drive—deep in west Altadena—where a woman requested help evacuating.
Within minutes. the deputy flagged her address to incident commanders. writing in the LASD call log that the address was “fwd’d to CP for evacuations. ” a common abbreviation for command post. In the same time window, a nearby L.A. County Fire battalion chief reported a structure on fire at the same intersection. according to the county’s report released last week.
That early rescue happened before the wider evacuations that would come later that night. But the 911 logs obtained by MISRYOUM USA News also show it took nearly four more hours for authorities to issue widespread alerts for the rest of west Altadena—turning a night that began with one evacuation into a record of missed warnings. confusion. and a community that would later pay a devastating price.
The stakes are stark. In the end. all but one of the 19 people who died in the Eaton fire were found in west Altadena. where the fire damage was most concentrated. The new 911 records add to mounting evidence that fire and sheriff personnel on the ground in the first hours of the blaze knew it was threatening Altadena neighborhoods west of Lake Avenue well before a 3:25 a.m. evacuation order was issued. No evacuation warnings went out to the area before evacuations were ordered.
Sheriff Robert Luna declined to be interviewed for this story. In a statement. his department said the evacuation of the woman from her home before midnight “involved an elderly resident who was understandably frightened and requested assistance. ” and that her home didn’t burn down. The statement added that at the time of that call. “her residence was not threatened by active fire conditions or impacted by fire progression.” It said a nearby structure fire reported by officials “was likely due to downed power lines or other factors related to the heavy winds that night. ” as opposed to the official fire front.
The department cited FireGuard data, a satellite-based firetracking system used by authorities only after the fact—while noting that the data does not pick up spot fires or ember cast, which are typical in wind-driven fires like the Eaton fire.
As the night moved forward, deputy responses in the call log show activity spreading farther west and into residential blocks—calls that did not immediately translate into formal evacuation orders for the broader community.
By 11:38 p.m., deputies were already responding to fire-related reports in the area. At 11:55 p.m. they responded to a call two blocks east of North Lake Avenue—the unofficial east-west divider of the unincorporated town—and reported back into the log: “several structure fires in area. unable to proceed north.” Around an hour later. deputies requested assistance evacuating a home on East Sacramento Street and reported another on fire on East Las Flores Drive—both west of Lake Avenue. according to the county report.
At 1:30 a.m. on Lake Avenue at East Palm Street. the dispatch log detailed a call about a “house. vehicle and tree on fire.” Around 2:30 a.m. deputies responded to a call about a house fire on Concha Street and Santa Anita Avenue. deep in west Altadena. Minutes later. at 2:43 a.m. deputies reported “significant fire activity on both sides of Lake Avenue. ” including flames near residences in the 300 block of Wapello Street—about three blocks west of Lake Avenue. according to the reports.
At this point, the records show, no formal evacuation orders—or warnings—had been issued for west Altadena residents. Much of the area was finally issued an evacuation alert at 3:25 a.m. But at least one zone, the Calaveras zone, wasn’t issued an evacuation order until about 5:45 a.m. Logs show deputies responded to a call in that zone almost three hours earlier. reporting “fire took over area” at 3 a.m.
The call log also shows first responders becoming increasingly overwhelmed as the fire exploded into a community conflagration. As the night went on. a growing share of calls—many not considered high priority—were ignored or not immediately addressed. and entries included language such as “Unable to respond due to Eaton Fire response. ” or “unable to access area due to Eaton fire.”.
Thomas Cova. a professor at the University of Utah who studies wildfire evacuation analysis. called the gap between knowledge and warning “a staggering amount of time.” “How could they not be in the loop?” Cova said of the fire’s incident commanders. “How could they not know that these 911 calls were coming in?. … That’s their job, monitoring their radios or whatever they have with them.”.
Some experts who have worked major wildfires emphasized that chaotic conditions can cloud command decisions. particularly at night and without aerial surveillance. Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea. who has worked to improve his agency’s evacuation protocols after major emergencies including the deadly Camp fire in 2018. described the challenge this way: “There are times when the chaos is so overwhelming that it is impossible to expect to have complete understanding what the situation is.”.
Honea said gaining situational awareness “in the early hours. especially days” of a threatening event can be “really. really challenging.” He said monitoring radio updates and 911 calls can help commanders but is not a cure-all. “You can only monitor so many lines of communication at one given time,” he said.
In its statement, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department emphasized those conditions, saying deputies and officials worked “under extremely chaotic and hazardous conditions, using the information they had available.”
The statement did not directly respond to whether the agency believes top commanders should have been more involved in evacuations or better monitored reports from the field. It did say that formal evacuation alerts—Wireless Emergency Alerts geo-coded to alarm cellphones in a particular area—are “only one method of notification” and that evacuation efforts were continuous and. at times. done before the formal wireless emergency alerts.
MISRYOUM USA News previously reported that some residents recalled instances of sheriff’s deputies telling them to flee before the widespread evacuation alerts were issued. though the extent of those efforts is still not clear. The outlet has also requested vehicle locator data from the department. and the agency has not fulfilled that public records request.
County officials, for their part, have leaned on a different finding. A report released last week by the L.A. County Fire Department concluded there was “no failure” or delay in how evacuations rolled out. County officials said the investigation offered new details from the chaotic first hours and pointed to incident commanders’ lack of situational awareness.
That report was conducted by a third-party consultant. It said Eaton fire incident commanders were operating without a full picture of the situation. particularly after aircraft were grounded. nighttime fell. and smoke and winds picked up—forcing officials to base decisions on limited information flowing from the ground. It found incident commanders weren’t aware of escalating danger in west Altadena until after 2 a.m.
A week before the newly reported 911 records, MISRYOUM USA News reported in January 2025 that many Altadena residents evacuated in dangerous conditions without any warnings or on-the-ground aid. Some residents have blamed late alerts for their loved ones’ deaths.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta opened a civil rights investigation earlier this year into fire preparations and response, focusing on potential disparities in historically Black west Altadena. It is unclear when that investigation will be completed.
What remains unresolved is the mechanism that links the field to the command post. It is not clear exactly what chain of command was in place to relay information from the field to incident commanders. or how deputies on the ground responded to each call. because entries in the call log only include brief synopses. Still, the records show deputies responded to increasing flare-ups farther west before formal evacuation orders were issued.
The county-ordered review of LASD’s evacuation processes. conducted by the McChyrstal Group. said LASD officials at the command post are supposed to “contribute to decision making” on evacuations. while deputies in the field should help carry out evacuations. It added that “if observation is made that an evacuation is needed and …has not yet been issued from the incident command post. ” deputies should communicate to ensure evacuation alerts be established.
For residents of west Altadena, the question the new records leave behind is not just when alarms went out. It’s why an evacuation could be arranged for one woman before midnight—while much of the surrounding community waited hours for an official warning, as the fire advanced from call to call.
Eaton fire West Altadena 911 records evacuation orders Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Robert Luna Wireless Emergency Alerts Thomas Cova Kory Honea Calaveras zone incident commanders