Los Angeles suffered from a lack of up-to-date emergency alert systems and communication resources during the county’s response to January’s devastating wildfires, an independent review found.

The report was commissioned by county supervisors just weeks after the Eaton and Palisades fires killed more than 30 people and destroyed thousands of homes, schools, businesses, and places of worship across Los Angeles. 

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The 133-page report found no “single point of failure” but outlined several weaknesses that it said hindered Los Angeles County’s emergency response efforts, including “outdated policies, inconsistent practices and communications vulnerabilities.”

“While frontline responders acted decisively and, in many cases, heroically, in the face of extraordinary conditions, the events underscored the need for clearer policies, stronger training, integrated tools, and improved public communication,” the report said.

County officials stressed that the report was not released to blame any one entity. The report emphasized the hard work firefighters did to combat fires in the face of high winds.

“This isn’t about pointing fingers. It’s about learning lessons, improving safety, and restoring public trust. Survivors of the Eaton Fire deserve answers — and today’s report is an important step toward delivering them,” said Supervisor Kathryn Barger, whose district includes Altadena, a historic neighborhood that saw extreme damage in the Eaton fire. 

According to the report, the Office of Emergency Management had been transitioning to new emergency notification software that only a few staff members were familiar with at the time of the fires. The report additionally found that the process to communicate an evacuation decision to the public was slow and convoluted.

The decision also involved a number of leadership roles across county-level departments.

In the case of the Palisades Fire, the Los Angeles County Fire Department and Sheriff’s Department had identified areas requiring an evacuation, which they then communicated to members of the County’s Office of Emergency Management at the Incident Command center. That person then made a phone call or sent a text message to another emergency management staffer located in the Emergency Operations Center, who then updated the system, which was in place by the third-party vendor.

This process was what triggered an alert to the public.

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The report also found a gap in the county’s policies about who is leading alerts for residents to know about how to prepare for extreme weather risks. The county had sent out several warnings about the incoming Santa Ana winds and messages from the National Weather Service, but the report found that there was stand-alone preparedness messaging from Los Angeles County.

The report did not look into the causes of the six fires that burned Los Angeles, which remain under investigation.