Why the Evacuation Alert System Struggled During the L.A. Fires

(TNS) — When the federal government in 2012 launched Wireless Emergency Alerts — a new system that allowed officials to send loud, screeching alarms to cellphones across a large area — many local emergency management officers were wary of the technology.

In 2017, as the Tubbs fire engulfed Northern California’s wine country, officials in Sonoma and Napa counties decided against sending such mass wireless alerts, worrying that they would cause county-wide gridlock and panic. Instead, they relied on an older system that sent messages to a smaller number of landlines and cellphone numbers voluntarily submitted by residents. Ultimately, 22 people perished.

A year later, when the Camp fire swept through the town of Paradise, officials did not use Wireless Emergency Alerts technology, opting for a system that sent out evacuation orders to less than a third of residents. Eighty-five people died, prompting a litany of investigations, reports and calls for statewide reform.

Today, jurisdictions across the state have adopted the up-to-date wireless alert technology., The federal system has also become more sophisticated, allowing operators to issue more precise, targeted warnings. But even with technological advances, problems remain.

As massive fires engulfed the Los Angeles area this month, the problem was not that officials failed to use advanced technology. Instead, missteps or missed opportunities occurred in determining how and when to alert specific geographic areas.

In Altadena, where flames erupted from Eaton Canyon around 6:30 p.m on Jan. 7, neighborhoods on the east side of town got evacuation orders at 7:26 p.m.

But residents in the west side of Altadena did not receive an evacuation order until 3:25 am — hours after fires began to burn through their neighborhoods. Of the 17 people confirmed dead in the Eaton fire, all were on the town’s west side.

“There’s no question that for some people having gotten that notification earlier would have saved a lot of grief, would have saved lives,” said Ron Galperin, a former Los Angeles city controller who produced reports on the city’s emergency alerts in 2018 and 2022. “Obviously, the notification systems need some work.”

On Jan. 8, county officials had a different problem: As officials tried to send alerts to a small area near the Hurst fire, they sent out multiple faulty emergency alerts urging residents across Los Angeles to prepare to evacuate. The alerts, caused by a software glitch, stoked confusion and panic across a metropolitan area of 10 million people.

The failure to issue timely and precise evacuation alerts — first to too few people in Altadena and then to too many — illustrates the challenges new wireless alert systems pose during fast-moving wildfires.

Unlike a hurricane that can be tracked for days, wildfires that transform into urban conflagrations due to heavy winds force emergency officials to make decisions in little time.

“The new technologies are super powerful, but small mistakes can lead to big errors,” said Thomas Cova, University of Utah in Salt Lake City geography professor, who specializes in environmental hazards and emergency management. “The decision making, it often comes down to one individual.”

In 2018, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency made news after sending out a false warning of an incoming missile attack to millions of residents and vacationers’ phones, televisions and radios. The employee who sent the alert, it emerged, was confused by an unplanned drill.

In 2020, when flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fire engulfed wine country, an alert meant to go out to cellphones in Napa County didn’t go through because of a coding error. The same year, an alert in Sonoma County was sent to a larger area than intended, while another included a hyperlink to an evacuation map for the 2016 Kincade fire.

“There is no perfect number to send, no perfect geography to send it out to,” Galperin said. “It requires, ultimately, human judgment.”

As a state that prides itself on technological innovation, California has taken a number of steps to improve its alert system.

It has standardized alert language by offering sample text for all 58 counties. It has set up the Wildfire Forecast and Threat Intelligence Integration Center to coordinate how wildfire threats are identified, analyzed, and communicated to the public. It has issued statewide Alert and Warning Guidelines.

“The amount of investment in hazard mitigation over the last 10 years has been a game-changer for the state of California,” said Mark Ghilarducci, former California Office of Emergency Services Director and chief executive of Emergent Global Solutions, a crisis management consultancy.

“No state in the country has done the level of advancement in a lot of the technology that we see,” he added, noting the state’s recent implementation of earthquake early warning systems. “We are pushing out information more than we have before.”

But Ghilarducci said the Los Angeles fires showed there is constant need for improved coordination and training.

“What I learned most from this event is that Mother Nature continues to outpace us,” Ghilarducci said. “Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, Mother Nature kicks you in the face and says ‘No, you don’t.'”

On Jan. 7, a Times investigation found neighborhoods across western Altadena did not get electronic evacuation orders until 3:25 a.m. — many hours after the first radio reports of fire west of North Lake Avenue. Witnesses said they saw deputies trying to evacuate some parts of western Altadena around 2 a.m.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger has called for an independent review of the matter.

Experts stress that it is too early to determine why residents of western Altadena did not receive alerts: it could be human error or technical error or a combination of the two. But with wind gusts of 70 mph sweeping embers for miles in multiple locations, the disaster likely unfolded at a speed beyond what most people would be trained for.

“In emergency management, they often talk about staying ahead of the curve: making decisions ahead of the events that are unfolding,” Cova said. “But this one clearly sounds like they fell rapidly behind the curve.”

The best practice for getting residents to evacuate in the Altadena fire, Cova said, was wireless emergency alerts: there was not enough time for emergency workers to fan out and drive street to street and go door to door.

Unlike alerts broadcast on television, radio or social media, the Wireless Emergency Alerts system can target people in specific neighborhoods with a loud buzz that can jolt their attention, even wake them from sleep. Messages sound even if a phone is on mute and — unlike older cellphone alert systems — people are not required to subscribe or download an app.

In 2019, improvements to the system allowed emergency management officials to “geocode” — a process of converting addresses into precise locations on a map — and to “geofence,” or create a virtual boundary around a specific geographic area.

But the wireless alerts system has drawbacks: alerts will not go to a phone that is older and not WEA-capable, or if its owner has switched it off or put it in airplane mode.

If cellphone towers go out, people don’t get wireless alerts via their cellphones.

And even when residents do get alerts, the messages typically don’t provide detail of how close the fire is or where to go. In the case of Altadena, alerts sent to the eastern parts of town urged residents to log on to alertala.org — a step that was not always possible as internet services shut down.

David Barrett, executive director of MySafe:LA, a nonprofit that works to promote fire prevention and disaster readiness in Los Angeles, stressed that it was important for the public to think beyond blaming officials and focus on what the public can do to prepare.

“If you have a family member, it doesn’t matter whether they’re wealthy or poor, you can still make a plan,” Barrett added. “Plans are free. You can still come up with contingencies and ways to look after yourself and your family members.”

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