LA County lawmaker calls for state audit of Eaton, Palisades fire responses

In the wake of the deadly Eaton and Palisades fires, Assemblymember John Harabedian

A local lawmaker is calling on the state Assembly to appoint an independent state auditor to examine the emergency responses to the deadly Eaton and Palisades fires, in hopes that lingering questions in the months since the disasters can be answered.

“Generally speaking, why did alerts not go out? The 18 deaths in Altadena happened primarily in the western part of Altadena, where the fires had been raging for eight hours before alerts were received,” said Assemblymember John Harabedian, D-Pasadena.

By that time at 3 or 4 in the morning, the fire was on the doorsteps for many of my neighbors and some of whom didn’t make it out,” Harabedian said.

Harabedian is a Pasadena resident who represents the state’s 41st district, an area that includes Altadena, the most affected community in the mammoth Eaton fire, which destroyed thousands of homes and left 18 dead. Twelve people died in the Palisades fire, which also left thousands of structures pummeled.

He saw many of his constituents lose their homes. He said a state audit could help Altadena and Pacific Palisades residents understand what went wrong with disaster response systems, and how they can be improved before another disaster strikes.

Harabedian’s request will be voted on by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, which he is the chair of, on Wednesday. The committee’s purpose is to monitor the operations and finances of government and public entities. If approved, the audit on January’s fire responses will take months, or possibly a year or two.

Harabedian’s time in the state legislature has been deeply impacted by the Eaton fire, which occurred on his second day in Sacramento for the year’s legislative session. It has informed the bills he has authored ever since.

“I really think we owe it to my constituents and my neighbors to figure out what happened. So I’ve requested an independent audit to examine the state and local response to the fires in both Altadena and the Palisades,” Harabedian said.

The lives lost across both fires is particularly devastating to Harabedian, and a driving force of the proposed audit– the families who lost loved ones deserved answers, not platitudes about doing better, he says.

If approved, the audit, conducted by an independent state auditor, will look at the full response timeline of both fires, including from when and where evacuation orders were issued, what resources were available for first responders, and the state of vegetation management in the area.

The audit will also include an assessment regarding state and local agencies’ communication with elected officials and the public, and the positioning of resources during the response, including command center locations. It will also look at utilities – why there may have not been enough water at certain places and when gas should be shut off.

“The audit will focus on a number of things, but mainly on how systems function in real time, looking at evacuation alerts, agency coordination, equipment deployment, utility preparedness, everything,” Harabedian said. “And really I think that it is incumbent on the state to push for this type of transparency, accountability, and the improved readiness that will hopefully come from this will help when the next disaster strikes.”

The audit will also look at building standards and what practices are best for homes in wildfire prone areas, knowledge that could help inform residents moving to rebuild homes that they lost in the fire. In a state where fire season is now year round, prevention is top of mind for many, especially those who have already gone through the loss of a home in a wildfire.

Calling for an audit is not an indictment of the first responders’ actions– they did everything they could on the ground as the fire raged, Harabedian said, but rather a look at the way the disaster response systems in place at all levels, state and local, may need to be reassessed.

Harabedian says that transparency and accountability are main motivations for the audit, which he hopes will result in tangible changes to systems that work better and lives saved during future disasters, which may happen in his district, or any district in California in the future.

His call for an audit comes as L.A. County and state investigations into the causes of the fire and the area’s response are also proceeding.

“At a minimum, I want to see improved coordination and communication during future disasters,” he said. “All coordination and being able to communicate during these disasters, whether it’s the fire, whether it’s the earthquake, whether it’s a flood, that is something that needs to be looked at across the board. Because unfortunately, we will be dealing with the next disaster very soon.”