Alert system failures during January fires in Los Angeles County

[ladn]

An independent after action report of Los Angeles County’s response to January’s deadly wildfires found a lack of resources and outdated policies for sending emergency alerts led to delays in warning residents about the need to evacuate as flames began consuming neighborhoods in Altadena and Pacific Palisades...

(via KTLA: https://ktla.com/news/california/wi...resources-outdated-alert-process-report-says/)
and (LA County response to deadly fires slowed by lack of resources, outdated alert process, report says)

I found this paragraph particularly interesting:

...The report cites critical staffing shortages including a high number of sheriff’s deputy vacancies and an under-resourced Office of Emergency Management. In addition, 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 communication platforms...

I find this disturbing, but not surprising. LA City and County have some of the largest, multi-layered, most costly communications systems in the country. The LA County RICS system was supposed to be the apex of interoperable technology. Smaller cities were subscribers to the ICIS system. LAPD and LAFD had their own supposedly robust system and all were augmented by California and Federal radio systems.

 

[Eng74]

There are a couple things too that I did not see mentioned, people have to signup for the alerts. We have a Kern Alerts in my county and you have to be signed up to receive them. Also, if the cell phone system is not working in the area, you are out of luck. We used to have a revers 911 system where it would call all the houses in an area, but a large part of the population have cut out a landline for their house since they always have their cell phone.

 

[ladn]

There are a couple things too that I did not see mentioned

Also, not all agencies involved in the operation choose to participate and provide date for the report (Pasadena is one). This triggers all sorts of internal alarms for the journalist in me.

 

[f40ph]

I always laugh at how "after action reports" and similar docs always blame comms. They do this because it's easy to do and nobody is smart enough to challenge it.

Show me a fire where everything is working correctly where police and fire, for example, use common platforms. They don't. The leaders might call each other on cell, that's about it.
Police talks on PD channels and fire talks on fire channels. When they coordinate anything such as evacuations, it's face to face between reps at the ICP or dispatch-to-dispatch intercom and dispatch-to-dispatch phone calls. You rarely hear a fire engine talking to a PD unit in the field on big fires, yet everyone thinks that ability would save the world.
<ok rant over - my opinion only>

 

[Eng74]

The word since 9/11 has been Interoperability. It has made radio companies a lot of money.