Altadena fire – More than a year after the Eaton fire killed 19 people in Altadena, a 51-page outside review commissioned by the Los Angeles County Fire Department concludes there was “no failure” in ordering evacuations for areas west of Lake Avenue. Community advocates and
For many residents of west Altadena, the warning came late—after flames had already moved into their neighborhoods and the escape window had narrowed.
More than a year after the deadly Eaton fire swept through Altadena and killed 19 people. a new outside review released Monday found that there was “no failure” in how L.A. County fire officials ordered evacuations. The report. commissioned by the Los Angeles County Fire Department and completed by CityGate Associates. concluded incident command could not have “reasonably” requested evacuation orders earlier because firefighters were not aware the fire was moving into west Altadena.
The findings, however, have landed like a stinging follow-up for people who say their worst hours began with delayed alerts.
The Eaton fire response had already come under sharp scrutiny after The Times reported evidence that the fire threatened west Altadena well before evacuation alerts were issued—describing several spot fires and heavy smoke and saying it took hours to evacuate the historically Black neighborhood. Those accounts. based on 911 calls. dispatch records. and resident reports of perilous escapes. prompted California’s attorney general in February to open a civil rights investigation into potential disparities in the fire response. The investigation focuses on possible delays in evacuation alerts and resource allocation.
The new report, though, does not acknowledge shortcomings connected to the evacuation alerts. Instead. it points to conditions that had existed in the area for years—streets aligning with canyons. dense neighborhoods with heavy tree canopies that can help spread fire—combined with strong winds and limited intelligence from aircraft overhead. In the report’s framing, those factors “made stopping the fire spread impossible.”.
L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger. who previously said there was a “breakdown” in how evacuation alerts went out. said the report found that “Unified Command did not engage in misconduct or intentionally delay evacuation decisions affecting areas west of Lake Avenue.” In a statement. she added that the investigation should not be read as dismissing residents’ experiences. saying “Public trust requires both accountability and a willingness to learn from every aspect of a disaster response.”.
For others, public trust is exactly what feels missing.
The Altadena for Accountability group—an organization that pushed for the attorney general’s civil rights probe—called the report “deflection without accountability.” In a statement. the group said the Los Angeles [County] Fire Department “declines to acknowledge any meaningful failures. ” and offered “little assurances that substantive changes will be made to better protect Altadena residents in the future.”.
Shimica Gaskins. an Eaton fire survivor and a leader of Altadena for Accountability. said the report “dismissed or overlooked” residents’ experiences and did not acknowledge evacuation alerts that came too late for too many. Gaskins said she wants “to know, first, that you can be honest about what happened on Jan. 7 and the following days. so we know you’re actually making the changes needed.” She added: “Without that first step. there’s no trust.”.
Gaskins said the report still left her waiting on the kind of determination she believes matters most: whether the L.A. County Fire Department “adequately protected all the communities.” She said she is holding out hope for comprehensive findings from the attorney general’s independent investigation.
Another critic. Art Botterell. a former senior emergency services coordinator for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. attacked the report’s posture. He said it struck a “defensive tone” and did not answer the real questions: “Why have so many Altadena residents complained about the warning process?. Do those complaints have any validity or standing?” Botterell wrote in an email that “Wails of ‘but we didn’t know!’ and blaming inadequate intel are traditional deflections. ” adding that “they don’t improve future outcomes.”.
The report’s focus is how evacuations were handled and when. It found “there was no failure … to request evacuation orders west of Lake Avenue sooner.” Lake Avenue, the report says, is a main thoroughfare and marks an unofficial east-west boundary for the unincorporated town of Altadena.
The report said it reviewed interviews, operational records, dispatch information, and incident communications. It concluded that Unified Command acted appropriately amidst unprecedented fire and weather conditions that grounded aircraft—leaving commanders without aerial surveillance to track the Eaton Fire in real time. Monday’s document also addressed calls that could have expanded evacuations earlier. It referenced suggestions to Unified Command staff just before midnight that “evacuation orders should go out for the foothills of Altadena all the way to La Cañada.” Yet the report said several hours—three hours or longer—passed before west Altadena was ordered to evacuate.
When it came to those expansion requests. the report said the calls “could not be cross-verified.” It cited cellphone calls and texts between Incident Command and Operations from 11:24 p.m. to 11:32 p.m., saying officials were focused on the Eaton fire’s eastern flank around northern Sierra Madre. It also said firefighters on the western flank had not reported deteriorating conditions that would make the area a “prime concern.”.
The report describes a turning point later. when it says firefighters in eastern Altadena were “still blind to the fire’s movements above them in the canyons. ” as winds pushed the fire west between Eaton Canyon and Rubio Canyon. The report said that around 1 a.m., firefighters remained unaware of the movement while, below them, the fire shifted. It also said that in the hours before incident commanders decided to evacuate most of west Altadena. spot fires in that area were mostly caused by downed power lines or felled trees—not by burning embers or from a “main fire front” that would not arrive until after 5 a.m.
According to the report, commanders became aware of the fire’s westward movement just after 2 a.m. Evacuations for much of west Altadena were ordered at 3 a.m., and alerts went out at 3:25 a.m.
Since the firestorm. the department has created a new policy to issue evacuation warnings to zones bordering areas ordered to evacuate. The report said that policy was not used for every community west of Lake Avenue the night of the Eaton fire. and it did not explore whether things would have been different for the victims had it been.
The report also contains a dispute over timing. While it claims all evacuation zones west of Lake Avenue were ordered to evacuate at 3:25 a.m. at least two zones—Calaveras zones—were not ordered to evacuate until 5:43 a.m. according to county records and a Times review of the alerts. The report did not identify that gap or explore why it took so long to evacuate those neighborhoods. Heidi Oliva, a spokesperson for the county Fire Department, did not respond to questions about the inaccuracy.
Since the fire. questions about disparities in evacuation alerts have been intertwined with questions about broader response gaps between west and east Altadena. The report does not get into many of those concerns. but it does point to how evacuations were made using predetermined evacuation zones. Many of those zones used Lake Avenue as an anchor because it is a major north-south street and “natural landmarks … that could be utilized as an anchor for creating evacuation zones,” the report said.
Lake Avenue, residents and investigators have long said, has also functioned as a demographic divider, with mid-20th century redlining and discriminatory practices keeping Black homebuyers from settling east of Lake Avenue for years.
L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone. in a statement. said he hopes the report can provide the community more transparency but understands “that no investigation can truly capture the horror and tragedy residents endured.” Marrone said his focus is ensuring lessons from the Eaton and Palisades Fires are turned into lasting changes to better protect residents and neighborhoods.
The report’s recommendations call on the Fire Department to develop another way to gather intelligence during a fire when aircraft can’t fly. The department said it has already done that. The report also called for designating a technical specialist dedicated to “incident intelligence. not consumed by immediate command.” Botterell questioned that recommendation and said it effectively implies the command team was overrun.
The report also laid out a priority strategy during the Eaton fire: prioritizing “life safety first. perimeter control. and defending buildings as resources allowed.” Botterell said that account left out what he believes was the decisive failing for residents: alerting or informing the public. He said emergency public information was “the real issue here. ” adding that the defensive posture of the report suggests limited institutional capacity to learn from “bitter experience.”.
And for advocates, that posture is where the conflict persists. Gaskins said she is still waiting for honesty about what happened on Jan. 7 and the days after—because only with that, she said, can people believe changes are coming.
For now. the outside review’s conclusion—“there was no failure”—has not closed the gap between the county’s interpretation of events and residents’ lived accounts. The attorney general’s civil rights investigation remains in motion. and for many in Altadena. the next findings can’t arrive soon enough.
Eaton fire Altadena evacuation alerts Lake Avenue Los Angeles County Fire Department Unified Command civil rights investigation Kathryn Barger Anthony Marrone CityGate Associates Altadena for Accountability