When the federal government in 2012 launched Wireless Emergency Alerts — a new system that allowed officials to send loud, screeching alarms to cellphones across a large area — many local emergency management officers were wary of the technology.
In 2017, as the Tubbs Fire engulfed Northern California’s wine country, officials in Sonoma and Napa counties decided against sending such mass wireless alerts, worrying that they would cause countywide gridlock and panic. Instead, they relied on an older system that sent messages to a smaller number of landlines and cellphone numbers voluntarily submitted by residents. Ultimately, 22 people perished.
A year later, when the Camp Fire swept through the town of Paradise, officials did not use Wireless Emergency Alerts technology, opting for a system that sent out evacuation orders to fewer than a third of residents. Eighty-five people died, prompting a litany of investigations, reports and calls for statewide reform.
Today, jurisdictions across the state have adopted the up-to-date wireless alert technology. The federal system has also become more sophisticated, allowing operators to issue more precise, targeted warnings. But even with technological advances, problems remain.
As massive fires engulfed the Los Angeles area this month, the problem was not that officials failed to use advanced technology. Instead, missteps or missed opportunities occurred in determining how and when to alert specific geographic areas.
In Altadena, where flames erupted from Eaton Canyon around 6:30 p.m. Jan. 7, neighborhoods on the east side of town got evacuation orders at 7:26 p.m. But residents in the west side of Altadena did not receive an evacuation order until 3:25 a.m. — hours after fires began to burn through their neighborhoods. Of the 17 people confirmed dead in the Eaton Fire, all were on the town’s west side.
“There’s no question that for some people, having gotten that notification earlier would have saved a lot of grief, would have saved lives,” said Ron Galperin, a former Los Angeles city controller who produced reports on the city’s emergency alerts in 2018 and 2022. “Obviously, the notification systems need some work.”
On Jan. 8, county officials had a different problem: As officials tried to send alerts to a small area near the Hurst Fire, they sent out multiple faulty emergency alerts urging residents across Los Angeles to prepare to evacuate. The alerts, caused by a software glitch, stoked confusion and panic across a metropolitan area of 10 million people.
The failure to issue timely and precise evacuation alerts — first to too few people in Altadena and then to too many — illustrates the challenges new wireless alert systems pose during fast-moving wildfires. Unlike a hurricane that can be tracked for days, wildfires that transform into urban conflagrations due to heavy winds force emergency officials to make decisions in little time.
“The new technologies are super powerful, but small mistakes can lead to big errors,” said Thomas Cova, University of Utah in Salt Lake City geography professor, who specializes in environmental hazards and emergency management. “The decision-making, it often comes down to one individual.”
In 2018, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency made news after sending out a false warning of an incoming missile attack to millions of residents and vacationers' phones, televisions and radios. The employee who sent the alert, it emerged, was confused by an unplanned drill.
In 2020, when flames from the LNU Lightning Complex Fire engulfed wine country, an alert meant to go out to cellphones in Napa County didn’t go through because of a coding error. The same year, an alert in Sonoma County was sent to a larger area than intended, while another included a hyperlink to an evacuation map for the 2016 Kincade Fire.
“There is no perfect number to send, no perfect geography to send it out to,” Galperin said. “It requires, ultimately, human judgment.”
As a state that prides itself on technological innovation, California has taken a number of steps to improve its alert system.
It has standardized alert language by offering sample text for all 58 counties. It has set up the Wildfire Forecast and Threat Intelligence Integration Center to coordinate how wildfire threats are identified, analyzed and communicated to the public. It has issued statewide Alert and Warning Guidelines.
“The amount of investment in hazard mitigation over the last 10 years has been a game-changer for the state of California,” said Mark Ghilarducci, former California Office of Emergency Services director and now chief executive of Emergent Global Solutions, a crisis management consultancy.
“No state in the country has done the level of advancement in a lot of the technology that we see,” he added, noting the state’s recent implementation of earthquake early warning systems. “We are pushing out information more than we have before.”
But Ghilarducci said the Los Angeles fires showed that there is constant need for improved coordination and training.
“What I learned most from this event is that Mother Nature continues to outpace us,” Ghilarducci said. “Just when you think you've got it figured out, Mother Nature kicks you in the face and says, ‘No, you don’t.’”
©2025 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Failure of L.A. County’s Evacuation Alert System Part of Bigger Problem
“What I learned most from this event is that Mother Nature continues to outpace us. Just when you think you've got it figured out, Mother Nature kicks you in the face and says, ‘No, you don’t.’”
