Virginia-Based Group to Review LA’s Fire Alert and Evacuation Procedures

A firm headed by the former leader of the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command has been selected by Los Angeles County officials to conduct an independent review of the evacuation and emergency alert procedures used during the response to January’s Palisades and Eaton fires.

The Virginia-based McChrystal Group, founded in 2011 by retired four-star Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is conducting a similar review of September’s Hurricane Helene, which caused extensive damage and left at least 105 people dead in North Carolina’s western Appalachian region.

“This is an essential step toward improving transparency,” Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chair Kathryn Barger said following Friday’s announcement. “The McChrystal Group’s forthcoming structured, thorough, and objective assessment will help us better protect lives and property in the future. I’m eager to review their findings.”

Members of Congress who represent the Los Angeles area have also launched an investigation into the county’s emergency alert system, which sent at least two erroneous evacuation alerts while some people in the direct path of raging fires received late notifications, or none at all.

“This was a massive communications failure and we all witnessed it in real time,” Long Beach Congressman Robert Garcia told the Los Angeles Times.

In a letter seeking more information from the county and its emergency alert contractor, Garcia said he wanted to determine whether “additional statutory requirements, guidance, or regulations” are needed to prevent future false alarms.

The planned McChrystal Group review comes in response to a Jan. 28 Board of Supervisors directive “to ensure the County and the public will ultimately have a clear understanding of all that was done to prevent the loss of life and property during the worst fire disaster in modern LA County history, and to determine what factors led to the tragic deaths of at least 29 of our County residents.”

County officials said work on the McChrystal review has already begun.

“The first progress report will be delivered within 90 days of the Board’s motion,” the announcement from the Office of County Counsel said. “All County departments, including the Fire Department and Sheriff’s Department, and the Office of Emergency Management, are committed to fully engaging in this extensive review, which will include gathering and validating the call histories of the fire, interviewing first responders who were on scene as well as incident commanders in the field and overseeing operations, searching and reviewing 911 records, and gathering information from many other relevant sources, including community members.”