A report claims Los Angeles County possibly rushed a new alert system just before the devastating wildfires broke out, which may have caused the high number of deaths in West Altadena.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the company Genasys pitched its new emergency alert software in several California counties, offering cutting-edge tech that aimed for quicker and more efficient evacuation orders in areas potentially affected by wildfires and other natural disasters.
However, while the counties of Riverside, Inyo, and Monterey tested the system for close to a year before fully implementing it, Los Angeles reportedly rushed it with just three weeks of testing roughly one month prior to the wires that devastated the Pacific Palisades and Altadena as well as parts of Malibu and North Pasadena. Per the Times:
The faulty evacuation order that buzzed on cellphones across L.A. County on Jan. 9, rattling already frayed nerves, was due to an error in version two, the newer iteration of the Genasys software, the company has told its customers. Faulty alerts continued to sound the next day, sending evacuation orders to people miles away from any danger.
The night the fires broke out, emergency officials had also failed for hours to send evacuation warnings to residents in west Altadena, where all 17 of the Eaton fire fatalities occurred.
Just one person from the county’s Office of Emergency Management was sending alerts for the three fires — Palisades, Eaton and Hurst — raging that night, according to county alert metadata, which includes the sender’s email address. That official, who sent all the alerts between 7 p.m on Jan. 7 and 7 a.m. on Jan. 8, had never before sent a county alert in an emergency using Genasys’ alerting software, according to a review of metadata.
Federal and county investigations have been launched to determine if the delayed evacuation orders for West Altadena were due to glitches in the Genasys system, officials failing to issue the order on time, or officials being unfamiliar with the new system. The county’s Office of Emergency Management said in a statement that Genasys assured them there were “safeguards to its software.”
“We can’t choose the timing of the emergencies that strike LA County, but we can and do work continuously to make sure we are using the most up-to-date technologies available,” said the emergency office.
Richard Danforth, CEO of Genasys, said in a statement the “the loss of life statistics remain dramatically below any other major fire event that didn’t have the evacuation capabilities provided by Genasys Protect.”
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“Last month’s devastating fires in Los Angeles captured local, national, and even international attention. The scale and scope of the numerous fires fueled by near hurricane force winds threatened multiple dense population centers surrounding the media capital of the world. The LA County Office of Emergency Management (OEM), with the support of both fire and law enforcement first responders, utilized Genasys Protect to affect the timely evacuations of hundreds of thousands of residents across multiple cities,” he said.
“Though the tragic structural and financial damage was record breaking, the loss of life statistics remain dramatically below any other major fire event that didn’t have the evacuation capabilities provided by Genasys Protect. Throughout the incident, Genasys experienced an unprecedented level of inbound inquiry for both our software and hardware solutions that we expect to convert into new bookings over the next several months,” he added.
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