L.A. County had a new emergency alert system. Did that hurt west Altadena?
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Genasys, a leading provider of emergency alert software, had a tempting pitch for California counties looking for a seamless way to send evacuations orders with a click of a button.
Lured by a better price and shinier features, Riverside, Inyo and Monterey counties made the switch to Genasys after spending about a year testing, debugging and training staff on the software.
Los Angeles County, on the other hand, waited just three weeks before deploying Genasys in early December, according to metadata from archived alerts. One month later, the system was put to the ultimate test as devastating wildfires erupted across the county on Jan. 7.
The quick turnaround raises questions about how much time county officials allotted to debugging the software and training employees on the new technology.
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.
Emergency evacuation alerts have gone off the rails, pinging people seemingly at random. Experts say that such errors can sow mistrust in the alert system, potentially endangering residents down the line.
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.
During a chaotic nighttime fire driven by extreme winds, it is unclear whether officials failed to order alerts for west Altadena, or whether glitches in Genasys or officials’ unfamiliarity with the new system could have played a role. The county’s stumbles around evacuation alerts are now the subject of both a federal and a county investigation.
The county’s Office of Emergency Management declined to answer questions about the transition to the software, called Genasys ALERT, citing the investigations. But in a Jan. 10 statement, county officials said the company had assured them that it had added “safeguards to its software.” The county temporarily stopped using the software after the accidental countywide alert.
“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,” the emergency office said this week in a statement to The Times, adding that the county followed best practices by “maintaining overlapping systems capable of mass notifications” before switching over.
The emergency management office switched from its previous emergency alert system, OnSolve CodeRED, to Genasys in fall, spending $321,000 for one year of the software, according to the county’s agreement with Genasys.
The software can be customized for a county, and officials in other jurisdictions said they spent time training staff and working out kinks. Kelsey Scanlon, head of Monterey County’s Department of Emergency Management, said that the first version of Genasys’ alert software “had a lot of bugs in it” when officials first got it in late 2022.
Most of the glitches were minor — one was not. During the testing period, officials were blocked from sending an emergency alert. Genasys determined it was a technical glitch and fixed it within a few days, said Tracy Molfino, an emergency services manager for the county.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) has sent letters to L.A. County and software company Genasys requesting information on ‘precise failures’ that led to erroneous alerts.
“Luckily, we had a very long testing phase,” he said. “That problem hasn’t surfaced again — but that was a big deal not being able to send that alert.”
After getting the software in 2021, Riverside County ran Genasys ALERT “side-by-side” with its old system for about one year, sending real alerts through the old system and then simulating sending the alert through the Genasys platform.
“We did this until our team was comfortable with the Genasys process before we actually sent any real alerts using Genasys,” said Shane Reichardt, a spokesperson for the county’s Emergency Management Department.
William Turner, head of Connecticut’s Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, said this training is critical when switching alert systems.
“You’ve got to be very well-versed and comfortable in using it, because you’re basically given the keys to the system to potentially alert millions of people,” he said. “And if you’re not trained or you haven’t practiced it before, the likelihood of error is there.”
L.A. County had also pushed for a longer transition period in 2017 when switching to OnSolve, which provided their software for emergency alerts until recently. Jeff Reeb, then director of the county’s Office of Emergency Management, asked for a five-month overlap with the previous system “to allow sufficient time to transition,” according to county records.
This time, as county officials jumped from CodeRED to Genasys, they settled for a much shorter overlap.
Despite upgrades to wireless alerts system, emergency warnings were often ineffective when most needed during the Los Angeles wildfires. Some were sent to too many people, some to too few.
When counties want to test their emergency alert system without needlessly alarming residents, they can send alerts to a test server. L.A. County sent its first Genasys test alert on Nov. 18, according to a database of test alerts. OnSolve said its contract with the county ended a week and a half later.
It’s not clear why the county did not opt for a longer transition period this time. The county had used different Genasys software meant for evacuation planning since 2022, and emergency alert experts say it’s possible emergency officials felt familiar with the company’s products and comfortable doing a quicker switch.
The system got its first real world test Dec. 9 during the Franklin fire. The county successfully sent out several evacuation orders for Malibu using Genasys, according to an analysis of the archived alerts.
Then, hurricane-force winds spread embers across the region Jan. 7, and L.A. County officials had to send dozens of evacuation alerts related to the Palisades and Eaton fires. The vast majority went out as planned, with two glaring hiccups: the countywide false alert and the lack of alerts to Altadena neighborhoods on the west side of Lake Avenue. Many of those neighborhoods were leveled in the flames.
The county had previously tapped Genasys to create evacuation zones for emergency alerts, according to an agreement. Lake Avenue serves as a boundary for many of those zones in Altadena, according to a public-facing map hosted by the company.
That dividing line proved problematic during the Eaton fire. Zones to the east of Lake Avenue got multiple evacuation orders as the fire spread into the area. Zones to the west of Lake did not get an evacuation order until nearly 3:30 a.m.
Inyo County, which also used Genasys to create evacuation zones, said officials had to adjust some of the zones where the dividing line was a main street.
“Genasys’ algorithm had it blocked off, so one side of the street was one zone and one side of the street was the other,” said Mikaela Torres, emergency manager for Inyo County. “And we’re like, in no way would we evacuate the north half of the street without evacuating the south side.”
County officials have told reporters that decisions on when and where to send evacuation alerts are made in coordination with the county’s Office of Emergency Management, the Sheriff’s Department and the county fire department. The county has hired an outside consulting firm, the McChrystal Group, to review the county’s evacuation policies and emergency alert notification systems.
Kevin McGowan, head of L.A. County’s Office of Emergency Management, declined to answer questions about how much training county officials had on the new alerting system, as it he said it would be part of the review, but he emphasized that “everyone that used it was trained.” Alert metadata indicate there were four people from the Office of Emergency Management who were sending alerts throughout the wildfires — three emergency management coordinators and one supervisor.
In the aftermath of the wildfires, Genasys’ Chief Executive, Richard Danforth, has touted the company’s role in the evacuations as a historic success.
Business, he said, continues to boom.
“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 wrote in a statement.
Times staff writer Grace Toohey contributed to this report.
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