Nearly a year and a half after the Eaton Fire tore through Altadena, Los Angeles County has confirmed what many residents suspected: Southern California Edison equipment sparked the blaze that killed at least 19 people, destroyed more than 9,400 structures and upended an entire community.
But identifying the ignition source is only part of the story. What the county’s investigation fails to address is a far more pressing question — who in local government is truly responsible for keeping Altadena safe?
The findings don’t explain why so many residents say they received little to no fire preparedness information beforehand. They don’t clarify why emergency alerts failed to reach countless households before flames arrived, how public safety resources were deployed in those critical first 24 hours, or why response efforts were hampered by outdated protocols, murky lines of authority, thin staffing and communication systems that couldn’t talk to one another.
For most Californians, local governance is a partnership between city hall and the county. But Altadena has no city hall. Los Angeles County is its only government.
The community’s town council, though elected, holds no actual municipal power — it can only offer the county advice. Instead, the Board of Supervisors effectively functions as Altadena’s city council, and the supervisor representing the area serves as its “mayor” in name, if not in dedicated attention, given that the position also oversees dozens of other unincorporated communities.
This isn’t a matter of a tiny outpost slipping through bureaucratic cracks. Before the fire, Altadena was home to nearly 43,000 people spread across more than 8.4 square miles — larger in population than 47 of Los Angeles County’s incorporated cities, and bigger in land area than 53 of them.
Yet the responsibility for serving this substantial community is scattered among numerous county departments: the Fire Department, the Sheriff’s Department, the Office of Emergency Management, Public Works, the Chief Executive Office and the supervisor’s office. When responsibility is spread that thin, accountability becomes nearly impossible to pin down after a disaster. If there were failures in service, the public deserves to know which officials and agencies should own them.
I didn’t come to this issue only as a researcher. I lived through the fire alongside my neighbors. My family evacuated, and we suffered damage to both our home and our business. In the weeks that followed, I spent countless hours helping coordinate aid and listening to survivors describe what they experienced.
That experience led our firm to conduct a pro bono study — called ARISE — surveying 1,228 Altadena residents. The results were striking: roughly three out of four households said they received no fire preparedness outreach from the county in the year leading up to the disaster. Fewer than 8% of people who evacuated reported seeing firefighters during their escape.
These accounts, drawn directly from residents, paint a picture of a county government that felt distant and disconnected both before and during the emergency.
The county’s own after-action review acknowledged real problems — outdated and inconsistent policies, confusion over who had authority to act, staffing shortages, insufficient training, weak situational awareness and communication breakdowns. But that review wasn’t designed to assign blame or investigate wrongdoing. Its conclusion that there was “no single point of failure” should not be confused with a conclusion that government didn’t fail. For survivors trying to make decisions about rebuilding their lives, that distinction offers little comfort.
Accountability isn’t a competition with only one winner. The fact that Edison’s equipment sparked the fire doesn’t absolve the county of its responsibilities around preparedness, warning systems, evacuation procedures, emergency response and recovery efforts.
Holding Los Angeles County to account doesn’t mean ignoring the extreme weather conditions that fueled the fire, nor does it mean second-guessing split-second decisions made by first responders in the field. What it does mean is asking whether the county’s agencies were adequately prepared, properly led, and equipped to deliver the services Altadena residents pay for through their taxes — services that, unlike in incorporated cities, come without direct municipal representation.
Currently, the state auditor is reviewing how the Eaton and Palisades fires were prevented and handled, while the state attorney general is looking into possible civil rights violations. That’s a start, but it’s not enough.
The Legislature’s Joint Legislative Audit Committee should launch a broader investigation into how the county spent money and delivered services in Altadena before, during and after the fire. That inquiry should compare Altadena’s preparedness, warning systems, staffing levels, deployment strategies and emergency response to those of similarly sized incorporated cities facing comparable wildfire risk — drawing on spending records, dispatch logs, internal communications and firsthand testimony from residents. The goal should be determining whether Altadena’s unincorporated status left it more vulnerable, both in terms of service and in terms of who is held responsible when things go wrong.
Altadenans deserve more than a report. They deserve an apology and an honest reckoning from Los Angeles County — one that discloses everything the county is legally able to share, acknowledges plainly where its systems broke down, and lays out how the harm done will be addressed.
No resident of an unincorporated community like Altadena should ever again have to dig through organizational charts and hazard mitigation plans just to figure out who is supposed to be keeping them safe.
Original source: CalMatters
