The Eaton hearth was marching towards west Altadena even sooner than beforehand believed, a state-commissioned report confirmed this week, elevating additional questions on why it took L.A. County officers so lengthy to order evacuations within the neighborhood the place 18 individuals died.
The fireplace erupted Jan. 7 at 6:18 p.m., fueled by hurricane-force Santa Ana winds that pushed flames into neighborhoods with nice pace. Inside about an hour, the county issued evacuation orders for most of the foothill communities close to the fireplace’s origin, together with the jap aspect of Altadena. However as The Occasions first reported in January, evacuation orders weren’t issued for west Altadena till after 3 a.m., effectively after the fireplace had threatened the realm. Evacuation warnings for the realm by no means went out.
All however one of many Eaton hearth’s 19 deaths occurred in west Altadena.
The Hearth Security Analysis Institute report, launched Thursday morning, doesn’t analyze why alerts have been delayed, however offers essentially the most detailed timeline but of the night time of the fireplace, together with new timestamps that present there have been indicators the fireplace was shifting towards west Altadena nearly six hours earlier than the realm obtained any evacuation alert.
The report notes that there was “hearth unfold to the west” as early as 9:30 p.m. on Jan. 7, pointing to a number of spot fires west of the fireplace origin.
By 10:22 p.m., and thru the following hour, there have been a number of radio calls reporting the fireplace was spreading west towards North Lake Avenue, the report mentioned. Simply earlier than 11 p.m., as The Occasions has beforehand reported, there have been indicators of flames in west Altadena — greater than 4 hours earlier than officers issued evacuation orders for that space.
The report states that winds shifted simply after 11 p.m., which “may have assisted in spreading flames that had reached the foothills and the northeastern part of Altadena to the south and west all through Altadena within the earlier hours of Jan. 8, 2025.”
A number of hearth officers beforehand instructed The Occasions that they weren’t conscious of wind shifting to the west till round 2 a.m, however the report exhibits that the indicators have been there earlier, each in wind measurements and in 911 calls.
Pasadena Hearth Chief Chad Augustin instructed The Occasions in Might that round 2 or 3 a.m. command workers on the Rose Bowl began receiving “good intel” from groups on the bottom that the winds have been shifting and pushing the fireplace west, requiring extra evacuations, however he didn’t recall the precise timing.
Between 11:18 p.m. and 12:17 a.m., the doc recognized not less than 10 hearth stories on the western flank of the blaze, exhibiting its advance towards Lake Avenue.
Why the county didn’t evacuate west Altadena earlier has been a topic of nice concern amongst residents, and a query the county has nonetheless not totally addressed.
A county report on hearth evacuations final month discovered that there was a suggestion to difficulty extra widespread evacuations to the west round midnight, however for unknown causes it was not heeded. It might be one other three hours earlier than incident commanders would order extra evacuation orders.
Although the brand new state report doesn’t present new particulars about that midnight suggestion, it does supply new insights into how briskly the fireplace moved, notably how early the ember forged from the Eaton hearth blew into west Altadena, finally ravaging the neighborhood.
The extremely anticipated state report is the primary of two from the nonprofit security analysis group. It offers essentially the most exhaustive examination but into how and when hearth officers responded to the Eaton and Palisades fires.
Though the doc doesn’t present a lot evaluation, specializing in the info of the circumstances, preparations and response, the findings have been clear that “the ember forged contributed to the fast growth,” Derek Alkonis, one of many authors, mentioned at a information convention on Wednesday, forward of the report’s launch.
The delayed evacuations have prompted scrutiny from public officers and Altadena residents concerning the L.A. County Hearth Division’s dealing with of the wind-driven inferno.
Michael Gollner, an affiliate professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley who leads its Hearth Analysis Lab, mentioned the timeline offered within the report is a vital place to begin to know what occurred in the course of the hearth response.
However he famous there was nonetheless little details about some essential particulars: What was the chain of command on the primary day of the Eaton hearth? How was data being shared? What different points have been incident commanders coping with on the identical time that might have affected evacuation selections?
“That’s what’s actually essential, how that data was handed on and the way a lot they knew that [the fire] was spreading into this space,” Gollner mentioned. “There’s much more to return and much more we’d like.”
Different already launched stories concerning the fires carried out by Los Angeles County and town have been met with criticism from residents for being restricted in scope.
Final month, a report commissioned by Los Angeles County discovered {that a} normal lack of planning, poor communication, understaffing and chaotic circumstances contributed to premature evacuation orders because the Eaton hearth tore by Altadena. However the report was broadly criticized for not answering key questions round evacuation failures, together with why county officers didn’t ship evacuation alerts to west Altadena till 3:25 a.m. or later.
Particulars within the state report shed some extra mild on what finally triggered county hearth officers to develop evacuations to incorporate west Altadena.
At 10:50 p.m., a resident referred to as in to say that fireplace was seen from her house on East Calaveras Road in west Altadena. Nearly precisely an hour later, a Los Angeles County battalion chief reported a construction hearth at Glenrose Avenue and West Loma Alta Drive, even farther into west Altadena, in line with the report.
Shortly earlier than 2 a.m., an official drove west towards Lake Avenue on East Altadena Drive, making an attempt to get to Honest Oaks Avenue in west Altadena to “examine the extent of fireside unfold” and located intense circumstances, the report mentioned.
“He couldn’t proceed as he encountered zero visibility, intense warmth, and had severe issues of changing into trapped,” the report mentioned.
Across the identical time, county hearth officers have been defending constructions on East Mount Curve Avenue close to Lake Avenue. They have been pressured to depart after half-hour due to hazard from the erratic winds.
Regardless of all these indicators of accelerating hearth exercise in west Altadena, it might nonetheless take greater than an hour earlier than the evacuation order went out.
Gov. Gavin Newsom commissioned the Hearth Security Analysis Institute, primarily based in Columbia, MD, to conduct an investigation a few month after the Palisades and Eaton fires killed 31 individuals and destroyed 16,000 constructions throughout Los Angeles County. Researchers and engineers from the institute — which additionally carried out the post-incident evaluation for the state of Hawaii after the 2023 Maui hearth — deployed to Southern California to collect proof to “construct a complete timeline of occasions and circumstances that can inform the evaluation of efficacy of the response.”
Thursday’s report offers a timeline of how the fires progressed and appears at state and native officers’ actions, climate circumstances, the emergency response and hearth suppression. It additionally features a assessment of 10 different fires that occurred in Southern California the identical month because the Eaton and Palisades fires.
The report additional captures the chaos and erratic nature of the wind-driven Eaton hearth and the challenges crews on the bottom confronted battling the inferno. Not solely was the fireplace shifting west sooner than beforehand reported, but it surely was additionally spreading east concurrently, in line with the report.
Simply earlier than 1 a.m., crews at completely different ends of the fireplace requested extra sources, asking for assist each to the east and west of the fireplace’s origin. Comparable accounts of the severity of the fireplace got here in from regulation enforcement from 1:11 a.m. to three:13 a.m., reporting homes on hearth in north Sierra Madre, in addition to in east and west Altadena.
The ember forged reworked what began as a wildfire right into a full-blown city conflagration. This seemingly made evacuations harder, consultants have mentioned.
When hearth officers are contemplating evacuations, they often have a look at wind pace and course, topography and gas kind to assist information them, mentioned Matt Rahn, the founding director for the wildland city interface program at Cal State San Marcos and the analysis director for the Wildfire Conservancy.
However in a quickly shifting inferno the place embers are casting miles from the top of the blaze and igniting spot fires, it “makes it very tough to evacuate communities and predict the place an evacuation ought to happen,” Rahn mentioned.
“When the entire sudden you’ve gotten spot fires begin actually miles away from the fireplace entrance itself, it creates this entire new problem,” Rahn mentioned. “You’re not simply nervous about what’s occurring right here, you’re nervous about different incidents which will develop into bigger fires or, within the case of the Eaton hearth, an city conflagration. They’re very laborious to foretell and so they’re changing into extra widespread within the sorts of fires we expertise.”
The second part of the report, anticipated to be launched in mid-2026, will draw on data contained within the first report to offer evaluation and particulars on the effectiveness of officers’ efforts to stop the fires and alert residents. The stories is not going to delve into the reason for the fires.
Artwork Botterell, former senior emergency providers coordinator for the California Governor’s Workplace of Emergency Companies, mentioned the timeline was a crucial first step. However though the timeline method could be helpful, Botterell mentioned, it additionally has limitations.
Botterell mentioned tendencies and variations in demographics, city planning, workforce improvement, and infrastructure improvement and upkeep is likely to be more durable to identify in a sequence of snapshots from a comparatively brief interval.
“New knowledge is all the time useful, however normally the blind spots lie within the questions we don’t ask,” Botterell mentioned. “A lot will rely on the depth, perspective and independence of the evaluation that follows.”
Occasions workers author Jenny Jarvie contributed to this report.
