Faulty evacuation alerts woke Angelenos in a panic. What’s wrong with L.A.’s emergency system?

An alert sent out in error Thursday and Friday told millions of Angelenos of an evacuation warning. “Our preliminary investigation indicates that an accurate, correctly-targeted alert went out from LA County’s Emergency Operations Center at around 4 p.m. on Thursday, January 9,” the county said in a statement. A preliminary assessment, the county said, found the glitch was due to “issues with telecommunications systems, likely due to the fires’ impacts on cellular towers.” “I can’t express enough how sorry I am for this experience,” Kevin McGowan, the director of the Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management, said earlier at a Friday morning news conference. “Trust in government is paramount” in the middle of a disaster, said Ron Galperin, former controller of the city of Los Angeles who produced 2018 and 2022 reports on the city’s emergency alerts. “If you don’t do it right, the implications are potentially catastrophic.” At the news conference, McGowan said the Los Angeles County emergency management team had not initiated any new wireless alerts since Thursday afternoon, when they issued back-to-back messages: First came an evacuation warning alert intended for residents near the Kenneth fire, which instead reached thousands more.