California to launch investigation over delayed response to wildfire in Altadena | California wildfires
The California justice department has opened a civil rights investigation into whether Los Angeles County discriminated against the predominantly black community of West Altadena in responding to last year’s Eaton fire.
The investigation will evaluate whether the fire response had a “disparate impact” in west Altadena based on race, age or disability.
Residents of the unincorporated community’s wealthier and whiter east side received evacuation warnings within an hour of the fire starting, while west Altadena residents received warnings about eight hours later. According to the Los Angeles Times. When flames began to engulf West Altadena around 3 a.m. local time, a single fire truck Dozens of people had arrived in the area to fight him as they deployed to the east side of Altadena.
These vast disparities have led to accusations that the Los Angeles county is failing west Altadena residents; Thousands remain displaced more than a year later.
“There was unquestionably an overdue emergency declaration and evacuation of West Altadena,” California attorney general Rob Bonta said at a livestreamed news conference Thursday. “We’re here to ask why.”
Notification delays and disproportionate allocation of firefighting resources appear to have cost west Altadena dearly. All but one of the 19 people killed in the 14,000-acre Eaton fire were West Altadena residents. Nearly six in 10 Black-owned homes were damaged.
“The investigation we launched begins with a broad question: Did the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s delay in notifying and evacuating the historically black west Altadena community during the Eaton fire violate the state’s anti-discrimination and disability rights laws?” Bonta said. “Did unlawful race, disability, or age-based discrimination in emergency response result in a delay in eviction notice that disproportionately affected West Altadena residents?”
The Los Angeles County “will fully cooperate with the attorney general’s investigation,” officials said in a statement.
“We believe the attorney general will see that emergency responders did the best they could under unprecedented and extreme circumstances as they fought to save lives, homes and businesses.”
Altadena for Accountability, a group of residents affected by the fire, called the investigation “a groundbreaking movement for civil rights and environmental justice” in a press release.
“No other analysis or report has done what this investigation has done; only the attorney general has the authority and subpoena power to examine whether our civil rights were violated,” fire survivor Sylvie Andrews said in a statement.
