By Stephen Witt
An independent After Action Report on January’s Los Angeles County Wildfires released yesterday found outdated policies and communication gaps, and recommended systemic improvements to alert, warn and evacuate residents.
The unprecedented wind-whipped wildfires claimed 31 lives and destroyed 16,251 properties in Altadena and Pacific Palisades, along with parts of Los Angeles, Pasadena, Sierra Madre and Malibu.
The LA County Board of Supervisors commissioned the independent report and and contracted the McChrystal Group to conduct it.
In emergency management terms, such after-action reports are known as “hot wash” reports. They are a post-event debrief designed to capture feedback and identify emergency management (EM) operations and response improvements. These reports provide key insights into what went well, what didn’t, and specific, actionable steps to enhance future preparedness and performance by capturing lessons learned while the event is still fresh in participants’ minds.
Hot wash after-action reports follow unexpected situations, such as terrorist attacks, and, in the case of Southern California, relatively expected emergencies, such as wildfires and earthquakes.
Among the report’s findings:
- County policies and protocols on evacuation warnings and orders are outdated, unclear and contradictory, and do not clearly spell out roles and responsibilities for issuing the directives.
- Staffing shortages and resource constraints created challenges, including an under-resourced Office of Emergency Management (OEM) operating with a staffing level “fundamentally inadequate for Los Angeles County’s complex emergency management needs.” The report also cited a high number of Sheriff’s deputy vacancies, a shortage of patrol vehicles and a 38-year-old Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system.
- First responders and incident commanders were unable to consistently share real-time information due to unreliable cellular connectivity, inconsistent field reporting methods, and the use of various unconnected platforms.
Specifically related to alerts and warnings, the report found that:
- The reasons why some residents did not receive any alerts “may have been the limited cellular coverage in the Santa Monica Mountains and San Gabriel Mountains, [public safety power shutoffs] shutting down the power of commercial cell towers that would have transmitted the messages, downed power lines, or signal strength degradation due to heavy smoke from the fires.”
- “The extreme and rapidly moving fire conditions challenged the situational awareness of fire and law enforcement first responders, making it difficult to communicate the fire’s location to the public. This was especially prevalent during the Eaton Fire, when wind conditions grounded aerial resources, including surveillance, almost immediately after the fire started.”
- There was a clear gap in the transition between the previously used alert and notification system, CodeRED, and the new system, Genasys ALERT, although it did not appear to cause significant issues during the fires.
The After-Action Report includes multiple recommendations to improve communication, coordination and collaboration across departments, agencies and jurisdictions in five key areas. These recommendations include:
- Updating policies and County Code to ensure that first responders and emergency management clearly understand roles and responsibilities related to making decisions to issue evacuation warnings and orders.
- Restructuring OEM and increasing staffing to a more robust level comparable to other large US cities and county emergency management organizations.
- Standardizing and enhancing preparedness and evacuation-specific training for all County departments and partners.
- Updating obsolete systems and technology to enable all emergency response communications to leverage the Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System known as LA-RICS. The report also suggests improvements such as implementing field-accessible mobile dashboards and notes that “access to reliable satellite data and internet connectivity would allow for more consistent communications and ability to share information in future responses.”
- Developing a robust and consistent public education campaign across the County to increase public awareness of zone-based evacuation protocols and alert systems.
The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to discuss the review and its findings and recommendations at the Board’s regularly scheduled public meeting on Tuesday, September 30.
