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In the first 24 hours of the Eaton fire, Pasadena’s communications director helped activate four different kinds of alerts to keep its residents apprised of evacuation orders, while also hopping on several news programs and doing interviews to share updates in real time.
Further east, when Arcadia joined the sphere of concern as the fire erratically tore through the San Gabriel foothills, the city’s fire chief successfully advocated for unified commanders to issue more widespread evacuations than initially proposed.
Then, when a shift in winds sent the fire on a terrifying march west, La Cañada Flintridge officials stood ready to quickly alert and evacuate all residents, having activated its emergency operations center immediately after the fire broke out almost 12 hours earlier — even though the small city was initially miles from the blaze.
Meanwhile, many residents in Altadena — which would end up seeing the worst damage from the conflagration — felt left in the dark, seemingly lost in the chaos. Thousands found themselves waiting and waiting for alerts and evacuation updates, even as their neighborhoods came under siege.
It’s a major point of frustration and anger in Altadena and has reignited concerns about how the unincorporated town is governed, how resources are allocated and how key communications are issued — especially compared to the many independent cities that surround it.
Long before the evacuation order came, law enforcement officers knew the Eaton fire was spreading in west Altadena, dozens of 911 call logs reveal.
The fire “brought to the forefront the issues of us being unincorporated; in some ways it did put us at a disadvantage,” said Darlene Greene, a member of Altadena’s town council, which can pass along concerns or recommendations to Los Angeles County leaders, but holds no real governing power or spending authority.
“Incorporated cities, in my opinion, just have more resources. ... I certainly think that hurt us,” Greene said. Other cities “have coordinated efforts for emergencies. For us, we do have it [through the county], but anytime there’s a middle person, there’s gaps. ... It’s not top of mind.”
It’s unlikely that Altadena could have fared better — even with its own city government — against the major ember-cast fire driven by hurricane-force winds, which fire officials say was impossible to fight at times, much less predict. But some local officials and residents wonder if dedicated resources and leadership could have improved the emergency response, especially surrounding evacuation alerts.
Reporting by The Times revealed that west Altadena did not get official evacuation alerts until hours after flames threatened the area, an issue that is now the subject of multiple investigations and reviews. It was in those neighborhoods west of Lake Avenue where 17 of the Eaton fire’s 18 deaths occurred.
“It’s catastrophic failure,” said Seriina Covarrubias, a west Altadena resident who has been advocating for better public resources and government representation for the town since even before the fire. “It just tells me that there was no centralized communication, no one was calling the shots and it was a hot mess.”
County officials, who were coordinating the evacuation decisions and alerts the night of the fire, still haven’t provided any answers or explanation about what went wrong, and how they failed to systematically evacuate a large section of the community.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who serves as the de facto mayor for Altadena, was quick to criticize what she called the evacuation “epic fail” in west Altadena, but Barger said this specific shortcoming doesn’t necessarily point to a larger issue about Altadena’s resources or support. She and other county officials have declined to comment further on what happened with the evacuation alerts until the completion of an outside after-action review.
“I know my unincorporated cities like the back of my hand,” Barger said in an interview. “Altadena, it is a focus, but I’m not ignoring the rest of my district.”
She pointed to her large, qualified staff that she said supports her and her work across her unincorporated communities, of which there are at least 63, including Altadena.
“At the end of the day … I do stand tall with the representation this county has provided to Altadena,” Barger said.
While it’s hard to make direct comparisons to nearby cities — particularly because the Eaton fire hit Altadena harder than any other jurisdiction — it appears that residents in surrounding cities had more avenues to receive communication, more focused leadership and more resources dedicated to their communities.
In the early hours of the Eaton fire, from about 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. Jan. 8., there was a significant time gap when no formal evacuation alerts went out. But once the late warning was issued for west Altadena around 3:30 a.m. — well after flames were in the area — alerts for sections of several cities nearby followed, first La Cañada Flintridge, then Monrovia and Glendale. Those cities — which ended up with no damage from the fires — initiated their evacuations before the final late alert was issued for west Altadena at 5:42 a.m., according to records of archived alerts.
As the fire continued west and overwhelmed crews in west Altadena, Pasadena was able to dispatch its police officers to evacuate and escort residents out of the Linda Vista area, neighborhoods just across from west Altadena. In La Cañada Flintridge, officials sent out geographic-coded phone alerts from their emergency operations center, in addition to ones sent by the county. Even NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, which has its own fire department, had its own emergency management team staffed 24/7 during the fire, sending out alerts to employees when necessary.
For the record:
10:03 a.m. April 19, 2025An earlier version of this story referred to Chad Augustin as the Pasadena police chief. He is the city’s fire chief.
“When you’re a full-service city, you have the ability to be a little more nimble and target some additional resources where there’s need,” Pasadena Fire Chief Chad Augustin said. While he and other city officials operated in a unified command structure throughout the Eaton fire — with the county and other agencies — “we’re still ultimately responsible for our city.”
And that is one of the most useful aspects of a hyperlocal government during a crisis: it can provide a central spot for questions, information and updates, said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Haynes Foundation, which supports research on governance and democracy in the L.A. region.
The possibility that an idle, unconnected transmission line somehow reengerized on Jan. 7 is now “a leading hypothesis” for what started the destructive Eaton fire.
“They’re going to be taking your case and advocating,” Sonenshein said. “The real advantage of it all is you have local representatives. ... They’re beating the drum about what’s happening in the community.”
Though L.A. County does have extensive resources far above that of any small city, there’s no avoiding the fact that Altadena is one small community in the most populous county in the country, Sonenshein said.
“It’s kind of easy for the unincorporated territory to fall through the cracks,” Sonenshein said. “This is a case where government structure has impacts.”
And while there may be a renewed interest in getting Altadena better representation, proponents are clear that is far from the priority right now. Community leaders and members are entirely focused on recovery from the devastating fire, which destroyed more than 9,000 buildings, the vast majority in Altadena. When one Pasadena leader in January brought up the idea of annexation — absorbing Altadena into Pasadena — it stirred contempt, both for its timing and the idea itself, which has been shot down repeatedly by Altadena’s fiercely independent-minded residents.
Sonenshein also pointed to the recent passage of Measure G, which over the next eight years will expand and potentially transform the county’s government by adding four new supervisors and a county executive. He said that could change how Altadenans feel connected to and supported by the county government.
But for Covarrubias, this is an issue that has needed to be addressed for years, and was made devastatingly clear when her neighbors were left — literally — in the dark as the fire threatened their street. She lives in the evacuation zone that got the latest order to leave, just before 6 a.m., about six hours after the fire was reported in the area.
Covarrubias, 42, along with her husband and their roommate, decided to leave on their own the evening of Jan. 7 before any evacuation alert. Many of her neighbors stayed behind, waiting to be told if they needed to leave.
“They got out just barely,” said Covarrubias, who is part of California Unincorporated, a group that works to improve how unincorporated areas are governed. “It was everything we were fighting against.”
She said she got involved with the movement after it took two years of organizing and hard work to get two speed bumps installed on her street — something she considered a no-brainer safety issue. She thinks the best solution is for Altadena to become its own city.
It’s exceptionally frustrating that no leader or agency has owned up to the evacuation failure — or provided an explanation — even now, more than three months after the fire, Covarrubias said.
“It makes you feel … like the county just takes the money from the homeowners’ taxes and runs,” Covarrubias said. “There’s not any leadership that has accountability right now.”
But cityhood may not be the only solution. In unincorporated Topanga, residents have formed the Topanga Coalition for Emergency Preparedness, a volunteer group that provides real-time emergency updates and disaster information for the Santa Monica Mountains communities and also coordinates preparation efforts focused on wildfire resilience.
“We do not believe the systems in place are good enough,” said James Grasso, the group’s president. “Even with my foot in the door, it’s very difficult to get communications.”
Grasso said the group formed after the Woolsey fire in 2018, when people really struggled to find relevant and accurate information about evacuations, road closures, firefighting and other needed resources. And while the county’s emergency procedures have since improved dramatically — he said there weren’t official evacuation zones in 2018 — he said getting key updates can still be confusing and inconsistent, particularly for the elderly or disabled. The group’s team works to compile and tailor relevant information during an emergency for its “perilous paradise” community, as it did during the Palisades fire, Grasso said.
“We have no city government, we have no town government. Our government, in effect, is our supervisor, and our supervisor has a lot of areas. ... It’s a huge district,” Grasso said. “We fight for everything that we have … because we understand, clearly, we need it.”
Southern California Edison has announced that it will bury more than 150 miles of power lines in in Altadena and Malibu following January’s firestorms.
While their group has a great relationship with Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, Grasso said there are still gaps in what their community needs — and the county has yet to fill them.
Interestingly, many of the people The Times interviewed in favor of more locally focused emergency operations for Altadena were clear that the on-the-ground firefighting — which operated as a mutual aid system during the Eaton fire — was not a driving factor in their position. Issues related to emergency planning, messaging and communications were the main concerns, which all fall under the purview of city officials.
“We’re all good partners, ... but our focus is our own jurisdiction,” said Arcadia Fire Chief Chen Suen. He recalled that when the Eaton fire’s unified command recommended parts of northern Arcadia be evacuated or issued warnings, he reviewed the situation with other city officials and decided to evacuate a larger area than initially considered.
“It’s so much better to get people out during an event for safety reasons, than to — at the eleventh hour — try to get people out,” Suen said in an interview with The Times.
The string of Arcadia’s evacuation alerts went out on the county-run Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system, which targets cellphones in a certain geographical area, but Arcadia officials also initiated its own protocols: posting on social media, using the city’s opt-in alert system and activating its Police Department to go door-to-door, Suen said. The city had also warned residents in the first few hours of the fire that evacuations could soon become necessary.
West Altadena never received any evacuation warnings.
In Pasadena, officials also focused on the idea of redundancy: making sure there were several ways to reach residents with critical updates. The city uses its PLEAS alert system, a type of alert that will text or call residents who have signed up; a program called Nixle, which sends opt-in email or text information; and also appearances on local news and posts on its website and social media. And that is in addition to the county’s WEA notices and police officers on the streets, said Lisa Derderian, a city spokesperson.
“Ultimately, in a unified command, we’re collectively doing two things: You’re looking out for the best interest of your city, but also you’re collectively managing a large-scale incident — doing the most amount of good for everyone in need,” said Augustin, the Pasadena fire chief. He said when his city has additional resources available, emergency staff looked to do things like additional door-to-door notifications or added patrols, which focused on his city but also expanded into Altadena when needed: “We knew no borders.”
The county used its WEA system and Alert LA County messaging program as the “primary communication methods,” to issue urgent and timely evacuation alerts during the L.A. firestorm, according to a statement from the county’s Coordinated Joint Information Center. The CJIC provides public information during large-scale disasters through the county’s Office of Emergency Management.
County officials, however, also recommend people sign up for their more local emergency notification systems, most operated by cities. Sheriff’s deputies also worked to carry out evacuation orders on the ground, though many in west Altadena said they saw few to no first responders that night.
When flames bellowed up out of Eaton Canyon on the evening of Jan. 7, west Altadena did not, at first glance, seem to pose the most urgent challenge for evacuations. So why did it take so long for evacuation alerts to go out?
The CJIC declined to answer specific questions related to the Eaton fire until the after-action report is completed. But it did say it follows all state emergency management requirements and has eight different disaster management coordinators assigned to different regions to better tailor its response. In a statement, it called its emergency response a “collective effort more than that of any single organization, department, or jurisdiction.”
It is, however, important to note that the community of Kinneloa Mesa — just east of Altadena — is similarly unincorporated, but had no reported issues with its evacuation alerts. The foothill community sits not far from where the Eaton fire broke out, and its evacuations were swift, with several of the first fire crews arriving there.
And for some, the evacuation alert issue in west Altadena is just that: one glaring issue, not a reason to go through the complicated and often expensive process of incorporation, or deal with more red tape or regulation.
“Obviously something went wrong,” said Connor Cipolla, another member of the Altadena Town Council. And while he emphasized that he wants answers and fixes so it doesn’t happen again, he said he’s not convinced Altadena would get better services as a city, and pointed to California’s strong mutual aid system during fires.
“Altadenans love their autonomy,” said Cipolla, who remembers living in Pasadena and constantly getting parking tickets. “The quirkiness and the self-determination and not being overregulated — all those things are the free spirit of what it means to be an Altadenan.”
Milissa Marona, another Altadena Town Council member, said she partially agrees with Cipolla — and with Greene, who pointed out that Altadena may be getting a bad deal as it remains unincorporated.
Part of what makes Altadena unique is its lack of local, complicated government, she said, but she also realized — especially after the delayed evacuation alerts during the fire — that it can be a weak spot.
“It does somewhat leave a vulnerability there because we don’t have the city resources,” Marona said, “but I think the county did the best they could.”
Times staff writer Terry Castleman contributed to this report.
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