Emergency Alert (Photo- Screenshot)
On January 28, 2025 the Board of Supervisors will decide whether to conduct an independent investigation of how the Eaton Fire and Palisades evacuation orders were handled.
By Melissa Michelson
What did residents who were in Altadena during the raging firestorm experience?
Evacuation alerts?
Based on a variety of interviews and social media posts, here is a small sampling of what Altadena residents have shared. The accounts are similar and largely consistent. Full names used with prior permission.
Brian Clements received an alert on his phone at 3:30 am Wednesday (West Palm): “While gathering my kitties, I could faintly hear a loudspeaker, but it was unintelligible. While exiting my home, there was a police officer escorting my neighbor out of their home. “
“Natalie” on West Palm said, an elderly neighbor woke them at 2 am Wednesday by banging on their front door shouting to get out.
On Tuesday at 6:55 pm, “Bernie” got an alert but not to evacuate — “just an alert.” His sons went door to door to let neighbors know to evacuate.
AG (who prefers to be anonymous) wrote:
- Didn’t see one fire truck in our neighborhood but several at Farnsworth sitting around and drinking coffee. Literally.
- No evacuation orders over speaker. All of our neighbors on our private street had already evacuated. There was a cop at thebottom of Santa Anita and Altadena Dr. sitting there making sure no one came in. But there were no efforts made to ensure everyone was out.
- We only left when we received an LA County alert on our phone at 3:30 am Wednesday.
“Alexandria” wasn’t in the area, but shared that starting at 7 pm Tuesday, she tried to contact the house guest at her place in the Meadows, but without power there, the phone was dead. The house guest evacuated sometime between 3:00-3:40 amWednesday when an official came through on loudspeaker warning everyone to get.out.now. She was down the hill by 3:45 am Wednesday.
Adrian Mansion at Fair Oaks and Penn, said, “My daughter woke us up at 5 am Wednesday having a major panic attack saying we have to leave.”
Paty Deluna said, “We evacuated on our own at 3:15 am Wednesday when the smoke was already inside the house. We received the evacuation order thirty minutes after. There were not fire trucks [in] the area. Location Alt Calaveras.”
Paul Woods said, “…we didn’t get any notifications until 3.25 am Wednesday. We didn’t get any “Get Ready” notification prior to the “Go” at 3.25 am. No one knocked at our door either. We were very lucky to make it out.”
Joni Paquette shared the following:
1) We saw A LOT of fire trucks, but they had no water on our street to put out fires. The home we lived in burned due to the above. The firefighters pulled up and pulled away.
2) There were sheriffs driving around our area, but not ONE got on their loudspeaker to announce that we had to evacuate! It was not until we evacuated on our own, and crossed Washington Blvd that we saw /heard Pasadena Police going up and down each of those streets telling people they had to evacuate. We left on our own, and it was late, that’s all I remember.
Marilyn Woodard Chong wrote, “We were on Glenrose and Loma Alta. Our place was destroyed. We lost power at 9:30 pm Tuesday. One of our three cell phones stopped working and could not receive texts, two seemed ok but got absolutely no warnings from the County. Thanks to Edgar giving weather updates and a Facebook post telling us about the “Watch Duty” app, so we could follow the progression of the fire, we decided on our own to evacuate around 10:00 pm.Tuesday. We were sure we would return home the next day, but left because we were afraid we would miss a warning since the phones were acting strangely. We heard no firetrucks and were not around the next day after the evacuation. I am so upset that the County, which gleefully accepts our outrageous property taxes, didn’t have in place a warning system that would work even with a power outage. …Our Ring smoke alarm company called us starting at 7:00 am Wednesday to say our smoke alarms were going off. We had evacuated (without any order) at 10:00 pm Tuesday. Fire crew staging at that time was at Lake and Altadena. We did not receive any alert, ever, in those 9 hours between when we evacuated and when our houses were destroyed. Not acceptable!!”
Local legislators are calling for an investigation
On January 28, the LA County Board of Supervisors will consider Supervisor Kathyrn Barger’s motion for an independent consultant to “review what the County, including the LASD, Fire, CEO-OEM, did in terms of evacuation efforts” for both the Pacific Palisades and Eaton Fires.
The public can weigh in on whether it should go forward with an independent investigation:
- Submit a written comment before the Monday, January 27, deadline of 4:00 pm at this link.
- Go in person to the 9:00 am meeting (Board Hearing Room, located at 500 West Temple Street, Room 381-B, Los Angeles, CA 90012) and sign up at the kiosk or through QR code on your phone, to speak on Agenda Item #10.
- Call in person, but this is tricky. According to the Board of Supervisor’s webpage “How to Participate”, “You must pay close attention to the meeting to know when the agenda item you wish to speak on has been called and it is your time to speak.” Sometimes agenda items get moved around, and the meetings can go on very long. You might miss your turn.
If you do not wish comment, you can watch the meeting live on YouTube. (Information about participating is found here: at this link.
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