Rescue in West Altadena arrived about 4 hours before the order was issued, 911 records show

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies evacuated a resident west of Altadena shortly after 11:30 p.m. when the Eaton fire broke out, according to 911 calls obtained by The Times, raising new questions about why it took nearly four hours longer for authorities to issue public notices.

Records show that this early evacuation was triggered by a chain of command, meaning emergency officials should have been aware of it. It also came when the fire brigade reported that a fire had broken out in the same area.

The logs add to mounting evidence that both firefighters and ground crews in the early hours of the fire knew it threatened Altadena neighborhoods west of Lake Avenue before the 3:25 a.m. evacuation order was issued.

Ultimately, all but one of the 19 people who died in the Eaton fire were located west of Altadena, where the fire’s damage was most concentrated. No exit warnings were issued for that location prior to the order being issued.

The new 911 records come a week after the LA County Fire Department released a report concluding there were “no failures” or delays in how evacuations were issued. County officials announced the investigation by providing new information from the chaotic early hours of the storm, and highlighting a lack of awareness by emergency managers.

The Times first reported that many residents of Altadena were evacuated from dangerous conditions without warnings or real help in January 2025. Some have blamed the recent warnings for the death of their loved ones. Earlier this year, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta opened a civil rights investigation into fire preparations and response, focusing on potential differences in the history of Black west Altadena. It is unclear when that will be completed.

A county report published last week, by a third-party consultant, said Eaton fire officials were operating without a full picture of the situation, especially after the plane shut down, nightfall and smoke and wind billowing, forcing officials to base their decisions on what limited information came to them from the ground. The report found that scene managers were not aware of the escalating danger west of Altadena until after 2 a.m.

This pre-midnight release highlights concerns about missed opportunities to issue timely evacuation warnings west of Altadena and raises new questions about the Sheriff’s Department’s role in notifying incident managers.

‘Amazing’ delay

There was an “incredible amount of time” between when emergency managers should have realized the fire was threatening Altadena to the west and when an official warning was issued, said Thomas Cova, a professor at the University of Utah who studies wildfire outbreak analysis.

“How can they be illegal?” Cova said about the fire incident management. “How did they know these 911 calls were coming in? … That’s their job, to monitor their radios and whatever they have.”

At 11:38 p.m., an LA County sheriff’s deputy responded to a fire-related 911 call from a home on Glenrose Avenue near Loma Alta Drive — west of Altadena — where a woman asked for help to get out, according to records.

Within minutes, a deputy alerted his address to incident commanders — writing in the LASD call log that the address was “directed to CP for evacuation,” a common abbreviation for dispatch — while a nearby LA County Fire marshal reported a building on fire in the same area, according to a county report from last week.

LASD’s search and rescue team was dispatched to help the elderly woman out, but the agency did not issue or appear to be pressing any broad warnings to its neighbors. It could be another three and a half hours before any part of western Altadena receives an official evacuation order.

Sheriff Robert Luna declined to be interviewed for the matter, but the agency wrote in a statement that the evacuation of the woman from her home before midnight “involved an elderly resident who was panicking and called for help,” but said her home was not on fire, and at the time of the call “the area where she lived was not threatened by burning fire conditions or affected by the fire.”

The fire at a nearby building, a department official said, “may have been caused by downed power lines or other items related to strong winds that night,” against the official fire station. The statement cited data from FireGuard — a satellite-based fire tracking system used only by authorities after the fact — although that data does not capture wildfires, which are common in wind-driven fires like the Eaton fire.

But even after the release, 911 call records and a new county report show that sheriff’s deputies responded to an increasing number of wildfires and outbreaks that continue to move west.

At 11:55 p.m., deputies answered a call two blocks east of North Lake Avenue — the illegal east-west divider of the unincorporated city — and reported in the call log: “multiple structure fires in the area. can’t go north.”

About an hour later, sheriff’s deputies called for help to get out of a home on East Sacramento Street and another reported a fire on East Las Flores Drive – west of Lake Avenue, according to a recent county report.

At 1:30 a.m., on Lake Avenue at East Palm Street, a call reported a “house, car and tree on fire.”

Around 2:30 a.m., deputies responded to a call about a house fire at Concha Street and Santa Anita Avenue, in downtown Altadena. Minutes later at 2:43 a.m., sheriff’s deputies reported a “significant fire incident on both sides of Lake Avenue,” including flames near residences in the 300 block of Wapello Street — about three blocks west of Lake Avenue, according to reports.

At this time, no official evacuation orders – or warnings – have been issued for residents of west Altadena.

Most of the area was finally under an evacuation alert by 3:25 a.m., but at least one area — the Calaveras area — wasn’t put under an evacuation order until about 5:45 a.m. Show Logs deputies responded to a call at that area about three hours earlier, reporting that “fire engulfed the area” at 3 a.m.

It’s not clear what chain of command was in place to relay information from the field to incident commanders, or how grassroots deputies responded to each call, because the call logs include brief excerpts — but records show first responders were overwhelmed as the fire ripped through the community.

As the night wore on, the 911 log showed an increasing number of calls — many not considered very important — being ignored or not answered immediately, hung up by deputies writing, “Unable to answer due to Eaton Fire response, or “unable to reach location due to Eaton fire.”

Wind-driven fires are notorious for first responders because of the speed and rate of fire spread.

‘It’s really, really challenging’

Some experts who have responded to large fires say it is important to note that the nature of such fires can hinder decision-making, especially at night and without aerial surveillance.

“There are times when the chaos is so overwhelming that it’s impossible to expect a full understanding of what the situation is,” said Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea, who has worked to improve his agency’s evacuation procedures after dealing with major emergencies, including a deadly camp fire in 2018.

While he said monitoring radio updates and 911 calls can be helpful for managers, he said it’s not a silver bullet, especially since so many things are happening at once: “You can monitor multiple lines of communication at once,” Honea said.

The LA County Sheriff’s Department emphasized those challenges in a statement, saying deputies and officers worked “under chaotic and dangerous conditions, using the information at their disposal.”

The statement from LASD did not directly respond to questions about whether the agency believed its top brass should have been more involved in the evacuation plan or better monitored reports from the field, but said those official evacuation alerts — Wireless Emergency Alerts geo-coded to alert cell phones to a specific location — were “only one way, release and attempt” wireless emergency alerts.”

The Times reported that several residents recalled specific incidents where sheriff’s deputies ordered residents to evacuate before widespread evacuation warnings were issued, but the extent of those efforts remains unclear. The Times requested vehicle location data from the department, but the agency has yet to fulfill that public records request.

LASD, however, has the authority to direct evacuation warnings, according to a McChyrstal Group review commissioned by the district about its evacuation procedures.

That report noted that LASD officers at the command center should “participate in decision-making” regarding evacuations, while field deputies should assist with evacuations. But “given that an evacuation is required and … has not been taken out of the operational command of the incident,” deputies should coordinate to ensure that evacuation alerts are established, the report said.