She died in the Eaton fire. Her family says emergency alert software was to blame
Lawyers representing the family of Stacey Darden, the Altadena resident who died in the Eaton fire, have filed a wrongful death lawsuit. case On Monday, it was alleged that the software Los Angeles County used for emergency alerts was defective and failed to warn him to leave in time.
The complaint, filed more than 10 months after the Eaton fire shook Altadena, targets emergency alert software company Genasys and accuses the company of using pre-designed evacuation zones, or “polygons,” that caused residents east of Lake Avenue to receive evacuation orders in time the night of the fire.
The lawsuit also accuses the Southern California Edison utility of starting the fire with its equipment, like many other lawsuits filed in the wake of the deadly blaze, while it is among the first to focus on how evacuation orders failed to reach a wide swath of residents. Genasys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Stacey Darden’s sister, Geraldine “Gerry” Darden, said her family thought long and hard about the decision to file a complaint against Genasys for her sister’s death.
“Edison started this fire and Genasys never warned him that he was in danger,” Darden said in a statement. “My sister was diligently following evacuation orders the night of the Eaton Fire. The truth is, if these companies had done what they were supposed to do, Stacey would be alive today.”
Morning sun seen from Sylmar on Jan. 8 shines through smoke from the Altadena fire.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Los Angeles emergency officials and fire crews were quickly overwhelmed on Jan. 7 when extreme red flag conditions triggered a series of devastating fires across the region, from the foothills of the Santa Monica mountains to the San Gabriel mountains. When the flames broke out near Eaton Canyon around 6:30 p.m., erratic hurricane-force winds carried hot embers for miles, igniting countless small fires that destroyed thousands of homes. 19 people died in Altadena.
After the fire The Times reported West Altadena residents did not receive electronic evacuation orders until hours after the fire started and engulfed the area, he said. All but one of the 19 deaths from the Eaton fire occurred west of Lake Avenue; residents here did not receive an evacuation warning until 3:30 a.m. on Jan. 8, at least six hours after their neighbors on the other side of Lake Avenue began receiving warnings.
At a news conference at Altadena’s main library, Doug Boxer, an attorney with L.A. Fire Justice, said Stacey Darden, 54, and her sister, Gerry, were on high alert when the Eaton fire broke out and constantly watched the news for information about evacuation zones.
Darden’s home in Altadena — 2528 Marengo Ave., about five blocks west of Lake Avenue — is not included in an evacuation order zone, or “polygon,” Boxer said.
The single evacuation order for Darden’s neighborhood did not arrive on his cell phone until 5:43 a.m. on Jan. 8, according to the lawsuit. The last mobile phone activity is believed to have occurred more than two hours ago, around 3.30am.
“When the eviction order was finally sent to his phone, it was too late,” attorney Mikal Watts said in a statement. “This is not a tragedy of bad luck, this is a tragedy of institutional failures,” he said.
“At its core, this is really a case of digital redlining,” Watts said at the conference, referring to Lake Avenue’s historic role as the border of the racial redline in Altadena.
The lawsuit aims to answer a question the company, the county and the after-action report have so far failed to answer: Why were warnings delayed for residents west of Lake Avenue?
Evacuation warning from Los Angeles Fire Department.
(Kirby Lee/Getty Images)
Since January, several neighborhood groups in Altadena have rallied around the issue of late warnings, pressing county officials to provide answers as to why the city’s historically marginalized west side received warnings much later than the relatively wealthier, whiter east side.
The complaint alleges that Genasys entered into a contract with L.A. County to provide a mass notification software system that county officials could use to alert residents during emergencies and had a duty to provide a system that was “safe to use for its intended purpose” and “defective in its design and manufacture.”
But he argued that Genasys’ system was “flawed and unreasonably dangerous” because of predefined evacuation zones that determine how alerts are relayed to cellphones and other technologies in a given area. According to the lawsuit, the areas did not take into account vulnerable groups, including the sick and the elderly, who needed more time to evacuate.
A recent government report highlighted a series of problems with high-end facility operators and their inability to evacuate all residents when emergencies arise.
As missteps in the Eaton fire response came to light and questions grew about who was responsible, Genasys officials maintained that their company’s software did not malfunction during the fire.
In March, Genasys CEO Richard Danforth said I told the shareholders During the Zoom meeting, “the system was operational.”
Most of the problems with warnings in the Eaton fire were due to human error, not technological problems, according to a county-sponsored after-action report from the McChrystal Group.
The report noted that Genasys software was new to L.A. County at the time of the fire and only a handful of staff in the county Office of Emergency Management had been trained to use it before the fires broke out.
