As Western Altadena Waited for Evacuation Orders, Fire Commanders Confronted Chaos
By Terry Castleman and Grace Toohey, Los Angeles Times The Tribune Content Agency
Firefighters stand in formation while listening to a daily Eaton fire briefing at the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California, on Jan. 17, 2025. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/TNS) Allen J. Schaben TNS
LOS ANGELES – As flames erupted from the dry hillsides of Eaton Canyon on January 7, fire agencies were confronted with a crisis far exceeding their worst fears.
Within hours, hurricane-force winds would propel three major wildfires in the Los Angeles area, with dangerous flight conditions grounding all aircraft and preventing emergency commanders from tracking the fire’s unpredictable movements. In Altadena, thick black smoke reduced visibility to mere feet, and powerful winds scattered burning embers across the streets.
In this challenging environment, a team of emergency officials set up a mobile command center to coordinate the response to the Eaton fire and evacuate residents. Over the course of three hours, the command center was relocated twice as officials struggled to keep pace with a fire spreading faster and more erratically than anything they had encountered before.
“Was it chaotic? Absolutely,” said John Miller, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman and incident command staffer, who recalled seeing a response vehicle with a tree branch protruding from its shattered windshield.
The handling of the fire has been increasingly scrutinized as residents question why it took almost nine hours for a large portion of western Altadena to receive evacuation orders. By then, multiple fires had been reported in the area, and many residents watched helplessly as flames rapidly approached their homes. Of the 17 fatalities, all were west of North Lake Avenue.
The delayed notification is now the subject of an independent investigation by Los Angeles County.
The movement of the mobile command center provides insight into the turmoil officials faced while managing the Eaton fire. County resources had already been stretched thin by the massive Palisades fire and were further taxed when another fire broke out near Sylmar later that evening.
“It was really a phenomenon we’ve never seen,” said Carlos Herrera, a spokesperson for the L.A. County Fire Department.
When the Eaton fire ignited beneath a Southern California Edison transmission tower just after 6 p.m., incident commanders quickly set up a command post at a nearby equestrian center, then relocated to Farnsworth Park in western Altadena shortly before 7 p.m., according to radio transmissions reviewed by The Times.
But within an hour, officials realized they needed to move again, shifting operations from Farnsworth Park—eventually consumed by flames—to the Rose Bowl just before 9 p.m. Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone and Angeles National Forest Fire Chief Robert Garcia decided to move to a larger space as their command team grew to include a federal incident management team.
In the early hours of the fire, evacuation alerts were issued frequently. Some eastern Altadena neighborhoods received their first “BE AWARE” alert at 6:48 p.m., while evacuation orders were given by 7:26 p.m. From 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. on January 8, evacuation warnings and orders from the Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) went out several times per hour, mostly covering areas that would not be affected by the fire.
“Most of the time, this is pretty smooth except for the fact that we had raging 100-mph winds,” Herrera said. “The fire initially moved away from the west side of Altadena, but later switched directions… We were trying to stay ahead of it, but again, it was something we’ve never seen.”
From about 2 a.m. to 9 a.m., Herrera worked with command staff to monitor and adjust evacuation alerts as needed.
From inside a firetruck, Herrera worked alongside three other officials—one from OEM, one focused on communications technology, and another county firefighter acting as an incident commander—to evaluate radio traffic and 911 calls to determine where to direct resources and issue evacuation alerts.
“We’d get a call, I’d check where the call was, and I’d check if the area was under evacuation warning or order,” said Herrera, using the county’s Genasys Protect website. “In that initial phase, our priority was: We need to get people out of there.”
At the Rose Bowl, incident command operated from three SUVs parked side by side: county fire, sheriff, and OEM, according to Miller.
A nearby truck housed the operations team, which relayed radio communications between the command post and fire battalions on the ground.
“Operations is getting intelligence from the various divisions,” Miller said. “They’re your eyes and ears.” Crucially, officials had no aerial view of the fire’s movement, as helicopters and planes had been grounded due to high winds.
The SUVs had their back hatches open, revealing trunks packed with “command boxes, maps, lights, and radios,” Miller said. Sheriff’s officials maintained a map of evacuation zones covered with plexiglass and marked with a grease pencil.
Officials followed a methodical process for deciding when to issue evacuation orders.
“There is a system of criteria that must be met before evacuation orders are issued,” Herrera said, explaining that officials aim to avoid unnecessary orders that might create additional hazards and strain resources.
“You don’t want to create hysteria,” he said.
These alerts were ultimately sent out by OEM, Herrera clarified, with his role being to help inform decisions. OEM officials have stated that evacuation alerts are issued in coordination with county fire officials and the Sheriff’s Department.
Herrera rejected claims of delayed action.
“That wasn’t the case,” he said. “It wasn’t, ‘Hey, we dropped the ball, we were late.’ The fire was just spreading so fast.”
However, from 12:51 a.m. to 3:25 a.m., no evacuation warnings or orders were issued, according to a Times review of archived alerts. Notably absent were warnings or orders for areas west of North Lake Avenue, where fires had already started, according to interviews and radio calls.
During this time, Miller recalled hearing a radio transmission about fires on Wapello Street, noticing the map and thinking: “Oh crap! This is a heartbreaker.” At that moment, he did not realize that the area had not yet been issued an evacuation order.
At 2:37 a.m., operations reported several homes burning in this area: one near Cobb Estate trailhead at the northern end of Lake Avenue, and two more blocks southwest on Wapello Street.
Evacuation warnings had not yet been issued for this area, and evacuation orders would not come until 3:25 a.m. Miller could not explain the gap, and noted that Angeles National Forest was not responsible for evacuation zones. Herrera declined to comment on the specific timing of orders.
In the absence of official evacuation orders, some sheriff’s deputies took it upon themselves to evacuate areas that appeared at risk, or those where they had received calls for service, according to Capt. Jabari Williams of the Altadena Sheriff’s Station. His deputies began evacuating areas west of Lake Avenue well before 3:30 a.m.
“The incident management team assigns missions, and some of those involve evacuating specific areas,” Williams said. “But you don’t have to wait for that; if you see an area in danger, you just make the announcements.”
It remains unclear whether incident command was aware of these evacuations.
Officials from the county Coordinated Joint Information Center declined to discuss their actions in detail but issued the following statement: “The Board of Supervisors has voted for an independent review regarding both evacuations and emergency notifications, to be conducted by a third party. The Office of Emergency Management, County Fire Department, and Sheriff’s Department are committed to fully engaging in that process.”
Several relatives of those who perished in the Eaton fire told The Times they believe earlier evacuation notifications could have saved lives.
“A lot of the lives lost were elderly or disabled, which is tragic because they’re among the vulnerable who need the most help from family or their support systems,” said Briana Navarro, whose grandmother, Erliene Kelley, 83, died in the fire.
At 1:22 a.m., Kelley responded to a text from her granddaughter asking how she was doing at her western Altadena home.
“In the living room looking out,” Kelley wrote.
“I think with a notice,” Navarro said, “it would have given enough time for some of us to go help our family members.”
