Failed emergency alerts during L.A. fires eroded trust. How to fix it?

In the early days of January firestorms, Los Angeles became a case study for what can go wrong with emergency warnings and evacuations.

There was chaos in Pacific Palisades on January 7 as people in the foothills tried to escape, but traffic gridlock remained. Later, when the Eaton fire broke out in Altadena, west side residents were not ordered to evacuate until five hours after flames began threatening homes in the area. All but one of the 19 people are confirmed dead He was on the west side at the Eaton fire.

Two days later, a wireless evacuation alert to residents near a newly broken fire near Malibu Canyon was mistakenly blasted across a metropolitan area of ​​10 million people. Authorities sent a correction about 20 minutes later, but the erroneous alerts continued ringing on phones throughout the night and the next morning, sparking confusion and panic in communities as far as 40 miles from any active fire.

For many Angelenos, the chaos and uncertainty surrounding evacuations and warnings have compounded the terror of the deadly fires. But this problem has had a more troubling effect: the erosion of trust. Some residents have turned to unofficial apps like Watch Duty. Others were so shaken that they concluded they could not trust the government at all.

Los Angeles is not the first community to experience life-threatening emergency alarm failures during fast-moving wildfires. Over the past decade, small towns in California, Tennessee and Hawaii have faced glaring emergency warning deficiencies as climate change increases wildfire risks.

But L.A. County’s failure to issue timely and definitive evacuation warnings, first to too few people in Altadena and then to too many people, shocked emergency management experts across the country. Why wasn’t the country’s most populous county, built on land vulnerable to intense fire, floods and earthquakes, better prepared?

“What we’ve learned is that when things break down in some of the most dire scenarios, the people and systems responsible for public warnings don’t seem up to the task,” said Thomas Cova, a professor of geography at the University of Utah who specializes in emergency management. “This wouldn’t be that surprising in jurisdictions that are inexperienced, unprepared or under-resourced, but it is surprising in L.A. County.”

McChrystal Group after action report Regarding the Eaton and Palisades fires, it found that the county operated with “vague” and “outdated” policies when deciding when to send evacuation warnings and that emergency personnel lacked training and a clear chain of command.

But almost a year after the fire, we still don’t know exactly what went wrong in west Altadena.

LA County officials could not explain why warnings to West Altadena were delayed. Although independent reports were published, they shed little light other than to say there were problems with coordination, staffing and training.

“Without an announcement for West Altadena, the specific lesson has not yet been learned,” Cova said.

Delayed alerts may not be the result of a single error.

“Gradual failure is a common theme among disasters,” said Michael Gollner, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley who led the study. Fire Research Laboratory.

To prepare for the next wildfire or other disaster, there are several steps LA County and other agencies can take to make sure they warn people in danger.

Improve coordination, situational awareness and training

One of the biggest takeaways from the Palisades and Eaton fires was that county staff lacked basic training and a clear chain of command.

McChrystal after action report It found that the district struggled to adequately monitor events as they developed and lacked regular coordination tools. It said policies and protocols regarding alerts were “vague” and “contradictory” and did not clearly outline the chain of command for decisions to issue evacuation alerts or orders.

The report recommended that the county update its policies and standard operating procedures and ensure first responders and emergency management clearly understand their roles and responsibilities regarding evacuation alerts.

He also called on the county to make the Office of Emergency Management, which operates as a sub-agency under the Chief Executive Officer, its own agency. Shortly after the report was released, the LA County Board of Supervisors approved a motion to restructure OEM as an independent department. The motion stated that “lack of autonomy and fragmented authority currently undermine the ability to effectively coordinate emergency management.”

To improve coordination, the report also recommended that the county create a mandatory wildfire and evacuation training program for law enforcement and utilize technology for situational awareness training. It was noted that the OEM needs to train more people in basic Emergency Operations Center roles such as alert and warning systems and situational awareness.

One way to improve coordination and situational awareness could be to train emergency managers in the same way air traffic controllers are trained with simulators, Cova said. Another would be to use some type of automated or artificial intelligence system to alert emergency managers based on where the fire is and where it’s heading.

Invest more funds in emergency management

Many emergency management experts were surprised to learn that the LA County Office of Emergency Management’s annual budget was just $15 million following the fires in January. This falls significantly short of the budgets of similar-sized jurisdictions such as New York City ($88 million) and Cook County, Illinois ($132 million).

The McChrystal report called L.A. County’s emergency staff “fundamentally inadequate,” noting that it has 37 employees to reduce risk to nearly 10 million people.

The LA County Board of Supervisors directed the Chief Executive Officer to evaluate OEM’s staffing and finances. The office is expected to release a report next week.

In an interview with The Times in October, Kevin McGowan, LA County’s OEM director, suggested that a lack of resources led to “trade-offs” and “coordination and communication challenges.” He said increasing its budget and staff is a key priority.

McGowan said he has already started creating six new positions. This will increase the number of LA County emergency management personnel to 43; this number still lags far behind similar-sized jurisdictions. New York City has more than 200 emergency management personnel serving 8.5 million people.

Training on clearer messaging

Even when wireless emergency alerts were sent out during firestorms in January, many were poorly written and did not have enough detail for such a large metropolitan area, according to Jeannette Sutton, an associate professor at the University at Albany’s College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity who specializes in alerts.

“Almost every single one of them is missing,” Sutton said.

The biggest culprit, he said, was the message echoing throughout the county: It referred to a fire “in your area” without specifying a location and did not reference a time. Sutton said the confusion caused by the message echoing around the county for the next 24 hours could have been avoided if it contained more precise information.

For example, “An EVACUATION WARNING has been issued for Calabasas/Agoura Hills” instead of “An EVACUATION WARNING has been issued in your area.”

Should the state or federal government step in?

California has taken a number of steps over the past decade to improve local warning systems.

After counties encountered a number of warning issues as they responded to a series of devastating wildfires in 2017, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services issued a statewide announcement. warning and warning guidelines And standardized warning language. Also developed best practices for county emergency plans Fire Forecasting and Threat Intelligence Integration Center Coordinating how wildfire threats are identified, analyzed and communicated to the public.

However, state rules are recommendations, not mandates. State officials and many local leaders tend to resist the idea of ​​blanket rules. They argue that the state’s 58 counties have very different geographies, populations and budgets, so it doesn’t make sense to impose disaster preparedness plans from above.

Still, many experts say a more unified approach to the country’s chaotic, customized emergency alert system is needed. Some are calling on the federal government to step in, noting that problems with warnings are not just a local or state problem — jurisdictions across the country are facing similar challenges.

Sutton said education nationally regarding alerts and alerts is extremely poor. While the Federal Emergency Management Agency is operating Integrated General Warning and Warning System (IPAWS), a national system that provides emergency alerts via mobile phones Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) and radio and television Emergency Alert SystemHe said his role was limited.

“We don’t have an organization responsible for providing education at the national level,” Sutton said. “You might think that would be the role of FEMA or the IPAWS program, but they’ve focused almost entirely on the technological capabilities of pushing the button and getting the message delivered via broadcast. They’re not focusing on the messages themselves.”

In May, U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) issued a release. report Open LA County’s emergency alert errors and called for more federal oversight of the nation’s emergency alert system. In September, U.S. Representative Kevin Mullin (D-San Mateo) introduced a bipartisan bill called the Resilient Emergency Alert Communications and Training (REACT) Act, which would direct FEMA to provide more federal resources and authorize $30 million annually for local emergency authorities to improve warning and warning systems.

But the Trump administration appears to have little interest in investing in disaster preparedness.

“Things have kind of stalled at the federal level,” Sutton said.

Sutton said it’s unclear what will happen to the IPAWS program if the Trump administration follows through on its promise to make drastic cuts to FEMA, or whether the federal government will step back entirely from strengthening the nation’s preparedness for disasters.

“Will they focus on preparedness?” Sutton said. “Or will they say, ‘Hands off, we’re done’? I don’t know.”