Evacuation warning messages that were erroneously sent to cell phones across the Southland when a wildfire erupted in Woodland Hills in January, sparking widespread confusion among residents, was caused by a software failure that has since been corrected, but additional funding and oversight of wireless alert systems is needed to prevent future errors, according to a report released Monday.
The report prepared at the behest of more than a dozen congressional representatives, led by Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Long Beach, also suggested that Los Angeles County should improve the wording of alert messages, ensuring they provide specifics about evacuation warnings areas and timestamps.
“The Kenneth Fire false alert was a wake-up call,” Garcia said in a statement Monday. “It showed the consequences of software failures, vague message wording, and a lack of federal standards. We must modernize our emergency alert systems to ensure that warnings are accurate, timely, and targeted. The public’s trust is at stake.”
The erroneous alert message was sent the afternoon of Jan. 9 when the Kenneth Fire erupted amid the windstorm-driven fires that ultimately destroyed much of Pacific Palisades and the Altadena area.
Kevin McGowan, director of the county Office of Emergency Management, said the erroneous messages were the result of a computer issue and officials quickly began working to resolve it. But a second erroneous message intended for the Kenneth Fire area was sent out again the following day.
According to the report released Monday, the initial erroneous report occurred because an accurate “evacuation area polygon” had not been uploaded to the federal public alert and warning system. The local firm that oversees the alerts, Genasys Inc., failed to notify the county that the polygon was missing, resulting in the alert being sent to 10 million people countywide rather than to the targeted neighborhoods.
The report noted that Genasys has since added safeguards to correct the issue. The report also noted that county officials reacted quickly and sent out a correction message within 20 minutes. But it also suggested that the county improve the wording of alert messages to make them more clear.
“Los Angeles County may have avoided damage to people outside the impacted Kenneth Fire area had their message included more information on the location or the timing of the danger,” according to the report. “This additional information is also important for people who have older phones, where geotargeting is not precise on those devices. A more precise description of the affected area could have been accomplished with language such as, `An EVACUATION WARNING has been issued for Calabasas/Agoura Hills,’ instead of `An EVACUATION WARNING has been issued for your area.”’
The report called for increased funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s wireless alert technology, along with bolstered requirements and oversight of third-party companies involved in issuing the alerts.
It also called for maps to be included in wireless alerts.
“While (the Kenneth Fire) message did include a link to AlertLA.org, where they (recipients) could have found a map, some users might not have Wi-Fi or cellular data to be able to open the link; and even if they could access the site they needed to scroll down, toggle an interactive map, and zoom in to see whether their neighborhood was included in the evacuation warning area,” according to the report.
The report concluded: “Congress and federal agencies must act now to close identified gaps in alerting system performance, certification, and public communication. The lessons from the Kenneth Fire should not only inform reforms, but serve as a catalyst to modernize the nation’s alerting infrastructure before the next disaster strikes.”
How we all knew that this would happen they’d always want more funding after they fire every fucking body for the fraud that they’ve done to the state by letting all these fires because how they make 8 billion dollars and $500 an hour right just to be a fucking bozo at the fucking fire department to be the most racist Fire Department in the United States right
Here’s my question if you electrocute a person everyday for 50 years how many times do you have to blow the transformer off the pole before somebody notices that your electrocuting people out there your prison cell. No shouldn’t there be a way that you can find out from Edison or PG&e how many times they replace the transformer on the pole after somebody was electrocuted and blew the transformer off of the pole. Now PG&e in Edison have never really did any severe maintenance to any of the lines across the United States of America so with the electrocution blowing out a transformer on the side of a pole would cause other wires down the line to blow off the conduit off the line so that the wire would be causing Sparks within the terminals down the line of the wiring system. So if you give it a strenuous force of blowing up a terminal or a transformer on a signal Pole you would cause more strenuous actions further down the lines and around the state so if you’re doing one failure by electrocuting people and you’re causing all the fires in the state to burn down all the rest of the shit to cover up your bullshit just don’t make no sense that you have to blame it on the electrical company because there’s nobody there to take the blame. And you always make out Rich because how you got The recyclables from the land after the house is burnt down and everybody’s murder was covered up all the jewelry and everything fell into the length and you can imagine there’s many of bags of diamonds and all them celebrities houses that burnt down. That’s more than welcome to fire department in the city gets right then you got the law enforcement I just don’t make no sense everybody’s making 10.424 trillion dollars a year but the average person walking down the street can’t make $20 an hour. at some point you’re going to have to go to the prison cell for the fraud the treason and the governmental Mutiny that you’ve got gone and caused the United States of America’s communities citizens
How they can get you a compensation for the Los Angeles Fire Department for burning down your fucking homes right they’re going to actually go out there and prove to the fucking world that they never had a fucking education to put the fucking fire out in the first fucking place but yet they allowed everything to burn across the state of California right and you’re going to actually prosecute every one of these fucking tired ass fucking firemen that came down here and did all this shit from Oregon that bought a fucking illegal fire truck from a fucking public auction right because hell nobody can follow the fucking laws in this country right but you’re going to do all this fucking shit for all them people that died out there in them fires they’re dead and everything of their fucking wealth is all in the ground waiting for the recycling company to come through and screw him even further because they seized everybody’s shit that got burnt out there but yet you’re going to figure out something they make $300 an hour and 75 million dollars a year just to be law enforcement in the fucking country and the president of the United States can’t make $250,000 a year man so you tell me where the fucking drug dealers aren’t ruining the fucking world at