Overview

• Los Angeles County released the 132–133 page independent after-action report on Sept. 25, with a Board of Supervisors review set for Sept. 30.
• The report cites a series of weaknesses rather than a single failure, noting delayed or missing alerts for west Altadena and some Pacific Palisades areas as the fires killed 31 people and destroyed about 16,000 properties.
• Investigators found outdated policies, unclear authority, critical staffing shortages at the Office of Emergency Management, sheriff’s deputy vacancies, limited vehicles, and poor communications interoperability and connectivity.
• A convoluted multi-step workflow took 20–30 minutes to issue public alerts and relied heavily on opt-in systems and link-out messages, while only a handful of staff had been trained on newly expanded Genasys tools.
• The review recommends updating county codes, restructuring and staffing OEM, standardizing cross-agency training, and upgrading interoperable communications, as fire-cause probes continue and lawsuits against Southern California Edison advance toward 2027 trial dates.