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Los Angeles Times
23-07-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
A Times investigation: As west Altadena burned, L.A. County fire trucks stayed elsewhere
West Altadena was burning, and no one was there to save it. More than 40 Los Angeles County fire trucks surrounded the Palisades fire, where an inferno was entering its 17th hour. An additional 64 fire trucks fanned out across east Altadena and neighboring areas, battling a blaze that had sparked in Eaton Canyon nine hours earlier. But in west Altadena — where thousands of structures would burn and all but one of the 19 deaths from the Eaton fire would occur — there was just one county fire truck as the flames spread at 3:08 a.m. on Jan. 8, according to automatic vehicle locator data obtained by The Times. 'We were abandoned,' said Sofia Vidal, 57, one of more than a dozen residents interviewed by The Times who said they stayed dousing flames through the night with no firefighters in sight. 'I never heard a siren.' Six months after the fire, the anger is palpable, with residents of the racially diverse unincorporated area, long a refuge for Black families, convinced that they suffered from weaker fire protection than whiter, wealthier areas near the Palisades fire. The sense of neglect is so intense that nearly 1 in 5 residents believes the county Fire Department let the town burn on purpose, according to an Altadena-based public interest research firm that interviewed more than 1,200 residents. 'Am I grateful for firemen? Not at all,' said Vidal, who fled her home with her husband at 5:45 a.m. after burning squirrels began to fall from their palm tree. 'Did they fail me miserably? Absolutely.' The L.A. County Fire Department's top brass has described the destruction in west Altadena as almost inevitable. The wind was too intense. The flames were too violent. The whole night, unprecedented. But the vehicle locator data, which show that most county fire trucks didn't shift into west Altadena until long after it was ravaged by fire, complicate the narrative. How much could have been saved, residents wonder, if firefighters focused on their neighborhood instead? L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said the lack of fire trucks in west Altadena probably boiled down to 'human error' by fire officials who decided where the trucks should move. Those officials — from the county as well as other agencies — were part of the 'unified incident command' stationed for most of the fire at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. 'Why didn't we do a better job of dividing resources between east and west Altadena, right? That's a fair question,' Marrone said. 'What was going on? What were the people doing? 'Did people who were working west not accurately communicate the dire circumstances that they were faced with?' said Marrone, who said he was at the Rose Bowl that night pleading with agencies across the region to send more trucks to the Eaton fire. 'Or was there a lack of resources? Or were both sides of the fire equally challenging? ... I don't know which one of those it is. It's probably a little bit of all of that.' Marrone said it's possible that other fire agencies sent vehicles to focus on west Altadena, but his department didn't track their locations. The cascade of events leading to the tragedy in west Altadena began when the Los Angeles Fire Department failed to pre-deploy fire trucks to Pacific Palisades amid dire wind warnings, forcing the county to pitch in. But west Altadena suffered from more than being the last place to catch fire in a day full of infernos. The vehicle locator data, according to some former L.A. city and county fire officials, point to a failure within the incident command coordinating the county's response, led that night by Deputy Fire Chiefs Eleni Pappas and Albert Yanagisawa. A growing fire is broken up into divisions, with supervisors — often battalion chiefs — communicating the fire conditions in their divisions up the chain to incident commanders, who use the information to decide where to position fire trucks. Incident commanders, the former officials said, should pay attention to the 'big picture' — not just where flames are raging, but where they're headed. That means sending fire patrols — vehicles equipped with a pump, hose and water — to nearby neighborhoods to spot whether the fire has jumped with the wind. And it means quickly repositioning firefighters from the biggest eruption to small but growing ones, where they may have more impact. Only one county fire patrol stopped west of Lake Avenue, the dividing line between east and west Altadena, during the first 12 hours of the Eaton fire, the vehicle locator data show, with assistant and battalion chiefs staying out of the heart of the neighborhood. Most county fire trucks didn't move from the Eaton Canyon area, where the fire first erupted, until west Altadena was well on its way to burning to the ground. Yanagisawa said incident commanders 'did their very best' to battle a fire that dramatically outpaced their resources, with hurricane-force winds pushing the flames in different directions throughout the night. But a former Los Angeles Fire Department incident commander said the data showed that too many firefighters were deployed like 'moths to a candle,' directed to swarm the flames immediately in front of them. 'Nobody stood back and looked at the big picture,' said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss another agency's operations. 'It takes leadership and situational awareness to direct that as an incident commander and say, 'Hey guys, I understand you guys are fighting fire there. I don't need you there. Based on the map, weather, rate of fire spread and 911 calls we're getting, I need you to defend homes and evacuation in this other community.'' The automatic vehicle locator data, which The Times obtained through a public records request, track L.A. County Fire Department vehicles responding to the Palisades and Eaton fires on a minute-to-minute basis. The Times used the GPS coordinates to pinpoint every time a truck stopped. Fire trucks from the roughly 20 other agencies responding to the Eaton fire, such as the U.S. Forest Service and the Pasadena Fire Department, were not captured in the data, nor were county trucks that didn't have a vehicle locator system or whose system was not working. County officials said there could also be gaps in the data caused by disruptions in cell service. The Times has requested, but not received, vehicle locator data for some of the other agencies. The data provide a possible explanation for one of county officials' key failures. Residents west of Lake Avenue did not get an evacuation order until 3:25 a.m. Jan. 8 — more than four hours after flames were first reported in the area. East Altadenans got their first evacuation order at 6:40 p.m. Jan 7. Some former fire officials said the data suggest that firefighters may not have known of the embers flying into western neighborhoods. Ferocious winds grounded a county helicopter over Eaton Canyon almost immediately, leaving no bird's-eye view. On the ground, county fire trucks were focused almost entirely east of Lake. No county fire vehicles responded to the 911 calls trickling in from west Altadena early in the night, according to the data, though it's possible other agencies did. The county has hired the consulting firm McChrystal Group to investigate what went awry with the evacuation orders. The county Sheriff's Department and the county Fire Department, which both had first responders in Altadena that night, have said they shared responsibility for ordering evacuations. A spokesperson for the Sheriff's Department did not respond to an inquiry about where deputy vehicles were that night, and the agency has not fulfilled a request for vehicle locator data. While homes near the foothills around Eaton Canyon were mostly unscathed by flames, most of west Altadena was destroyed. Thousands of structures were lost. Eighteen people died there — the vast majority on blocks where a county fire truck never stopped. One additional victim perished just east of Lake Avenue. On West Terrace Street, despite three 911 calls, no aid came for Anthony Mitchell Sr., a 68-year-old amputee, and his son, who had cerebral palsy. On Monterosa Drive, Victor Shaw, 66, died fighting the flames with a garden hose after a neighbor called 911. On Tonia Avenue, Erliene Kelley, 83, died after calling 911 twice. Her son, Trevor Kelley, tried to rescue her around 6 a.m., inching through oily black smoke too thick for his truck's high beams to penetrate. He said he understood why no firefighters attempted it. 'The only reason why I went is because of my mom and pure adrenaline, but I can see that it would be impossible for them,' said Kelley, 59, who arrived to find his mother's home burned to the ground. 'They would actually be committing suicide.' The county started the day with firefighters to spare. Marrone, responsible for fire protection across unincorporated parts of L.A. County as well as roughly 60 cities, extended the shift of firefighters about to go home the morning of Jan. 7, leaving him with 1,800 on hand. Later in the evening, he ordered 50 strike teams from the state, bringing an additional 250 vehicles into the fray. When sparks ignited near Pacific Palisades around 10:30 a.m., county fire trucks raced to help the Los Angeles Fire Department, which had been caught flat-footed after staffing a fraction of its available vehicles. In a day full of failures, the city's staffing decision, experts said, was the original sin, creating a 'domino effect' that hamstrung the county's response to fires in its own territory. 'They pretty much used up their extra people to assist L.A. city,' said Rick Crawford, a former LAFD battalion chief who reviewed The Times' vehicle locator analysis. By 6:15 p.m., according to the data, the county had sent 47 fire trucks and more than 40 other vehicles to the Palisades fire. More than one-third were in Pacific Palisades — an area the city Fire Department is responsible for. With the fire still raging across the Santa Monica Mountains, those trucks stayed put when flames erupted in Eaton Canyon at 6:18 p.m., about 40 miles away. New county fire trucks flooded the canyon area to fight what would become the most hellish blaze of the day, with hurricane-force winds scattering embers in every direction. Trucks soon moved into the eastern reaches of Altadena and small pockets of Pasadena before fanning east into Kinneloa Mesa, Sierra Madre and Pasadena's Hasting Ranch neighborhood, the data show. Firefighters said they met pure chaos on every corner — residents in wheelchairs desperate to escape nursing facilities, residents begging for their families to be saved. With lives still at risk, some county fire leaders said, it may not have made sense to divert to the west. 'We did not have enough people to shift in masses from one area of Altadena to another,' said Dave Gillotte, head of the county firefighters union. 'The story very well could be, why did fire engines leave the area where we had people still trapped?' A little after 10 p.m., some county fire trucks headed toward Sylmar after reports of a third fast-moving blaze came in from the San Fernando Valley. 'You can't just say, 'I'm not sending anybody to the Hurst fire — let it burn,''' Marrone said. Marrone said he has not conducted an analysis of fire truck locations because the state has hired the Fire Safety Research Institute to do an independent review of the overall fire response. He cautioned that the vehicle locator data show only a partial picture, because they don't include dozens of trucks from other agencies. The California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, for example, sent 68 fire trucks during the first 12 hours of the Eaton fire but did not have locator information available for them. The Pasadena Fire Department had 12 trucks at the Eaton fire that night, in addition to patrols, but couldn't say how much time they spent in Altadena, according to Chief Chad Augustin. The unified incident command was led that night by the county, along with the U.S. Forest Service, the L.A. County Sheriff's Department and several other nearby fire agencies. Marrone said that with his firefighters overwhelmed in the east, other agencies that came on scene later should have helped in west Altadena. 'I don't agree that it's L.A. County's responsibility to make sure we go into west Altadena,' he said. 'I'm not going to allow L.A. County Fire or the men and women of my department to take this on the chin as, 'Oh, the Eaton fire failure, the Eaton fire deaths, were solely the responsibility of Chief Marrone and his men and women.' No, in my mind, that can't be farther from the truth.' As firefighters battled three raging blazes across the county on Jan. 7, 911 dispatchers got the first clear sign at 10:50 p.m. that flying embers were threatening homes west of Lake Avenue. A 911 caller reported a flaming roof on East Calaveras Street. Two more calls from the street followed. By 3:25 a.m., when the first evacuation order for the area went out, 911 dispatchers had received 17 reports of fire from homes west of Lake Avenue. No county fire trucks responded to those homes, according to the data. 'Where these calls come in, they've got to assign somebody right away. 'Hey, yeah, we got reports of this fire jumping Lake Avenue. What's going on? Any engines over there?'' said a former L.A. County fire captain who reviewed The Times' analysis and requested anonymity to speak candidly about his former employer's response. 'We're taught to not grow roots, so to speak, in any one area — you've got to move.' Marrone said the addresses from the 911 calls should have all been relayed to the unified incident command. It's possible, he said, that commanders sent fire trucks from other agencies to those calls, which wouldn't have been reflected in the data. Soon, west Altadena was a hellscape. Dispatchers were fielding a deluge of 911 calls, many from residents trapped inside burning homes. 'I begged them to come. I imagine they have me on tape — I was crying when I said it. My life was going before my eyes,' said Daniel MacPherson, 70, who called 911 around 5 a.m. after the smoke grew so thick he couldn't see his hand. 'They said, 'We're busy.'' He escaped as his neighbors' home was engulfed in flames. Kim Winiecki, 77, and Evelyn McClendon, 59, didn't make it out. After the 3:25 a.m. evacuation order, some county fire trucks moved into west Altadena, but most stayed east, according to the vehicle locator data, even as the blaze worsened in the west. Between 5:30 and 6 a.m., 42 trucks made stops around the Eaton fire, but just seven of them in west Altadena. The number of fire trucks in the area gradually increased through the afternoon, the data show, though homes continued to burn throughout the day. Sylvie Andrews, 45, returned to her home around 11 a.m. after the winds had calmed — just in time to watch it go up in flames. 'It was fightable, and they were not fighting at all,' said Andrews, who said she was sympathetic to the difficulty of saving homes at the fire's peak but couldn't understand why she lost everything later in the morning. Many Altadena residents don't need data to be convinced that their homes probably burned with no fire trucks around. The marquee at a local Catholic school was vandalized to read: 'FIRE DEPARTMENT WTF.' Neighbors joke about defending their street with a 'bucket brigade.' 'Citizens with garden hoses — those are the only people who fought the fire,' said Steven Lamb, who said he spent the night pacing his street with his hose, battling flaming palm fronds and embers the size of baseballs. Lamb, a residential designer, said sheriff's deputies forced him to evacuate at 10:30 a.m. He turned on the news at 2 p.m. to see his house had burned to the ground. At 67 years old, he's now living with his wife in his childhood bedroom in his mother's home. Shawna Dawson Beer, who runs a popular Facebook group for Altadenans, described residents as in 'pitchfork mode.' 'I did not think there was any universe where it would be possible to turn a community against beloved first responders — this is it,' said Dawson Beer, 51. 'We were left to burn.'
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Yahoo
2 men, cousins, accused in brutal 2024 murder of U.S. Marine in L.A. County
Two men have been arrested and charged in connection with the brutal 2024 murder of a 42-year-old active-duty United States Marine in Los Angeles County, officials announced. The violence, according to a news release from the L.A. County District Attorney's Office, occurred around 2 a.m. on May 28, 2024, outside of a bar in Bellflower. Prosecutors allege that 21-year-old Long Beach resident Damari Kensey and 28-year-old Inglewood resident Jaymel Williams, who are cousins, followed Peter Chounthala out of the bar and violently beat him, leaving him seriously injured in the middle of Artesia Boulevard, near Virginia Avenue where he was then struck by a motorist who failed to stop, identify themselves or render aid. The driver who hit the 42-year-old has not been identified, authorities noted. Deputies with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, along with paramedics with the L.A. County Fire Department arrived at the location and declared Chounthala, a husband and father of a 3-year-old boy, dead at the scene. 'Investigators believe that Mr. Chounthala was an innocent victim of these senseless acts of violence,' LASD Lt. Patricia Thomas said at the time. Even two months after the deadly attack, detectives had few, if any, leads, including descriptions of the suspects involved, prompting the L.A. County Board of Supervisors to offer a $20,000 reward in the case. U.S. Marshal wrongly detained by ICE agents in lobby of federal building The 42-year-old serviceman was set to retire later in the year and planned to be a stay-at-home dad, his grieving wife said at a press conference announcing the reward. It's unclear how detectives linked Kensey and Williams to the violent assault, when the cousins were arrested or if authorities received a tip that led to their arrests. Both men have since been charged with one count of murder and are each being held on $2 million bail. A preliminary hearing has been scheduled for June 18. If convicted as charged, Kensey and Williams face a maximum sentence of life in state prison. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Los Angeles Times
25-05-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
Urban fires can require long trips for helicopters to get water. Ex-L.A. County firefighter has a solution
CABAZON, Calif. — Mark Whaling and a crew raced up and down a hill in a tanker truck as they battled a wildfire in Los Angeles County, scrambling to get water from a street hydrant in time to stay ahead of flames moving up a ridge. A helicopter flew in to drop water, but it had to fly a long distance to refill — and a fire that might have been stopped went on to destroy homes. As they fought that early 2000s blaze, Whaling says, he spotted a sealed, million-gallon water tank nearby that firefighters had no way of accessing. He thought that was ridiculous. 'We don't tell fire engines, 'Protect the city and go find your own water.' We put fire hydrants every 600 feet all around cities,' said Whaling, who has since retired from the L.A. County Fire Department. 'But when it comes to the helicopters, we weren't supporting them as robustly as we should.' His frustration sparked an idea: the Heli-Hydrant, a relatively small, open tank that can be rapidly filled with water, enabling helicopters to refill faster for urban fires rather than flying to sometimes distant lakes or ponds. As wildfires become more frequent and damaging in Southern California and beyond, Whaling's invention is getting the attention of officials eager to boost preparedness. First used fighting the 2020 Blue Ridge fire in Yorba Linda, 10 Heli-Hydrants have been built across the Southland and 16 more are underway, Whaling says. Helicopters are essential for firefighting. They can drop 1,000 gallons of water at once — some much more. That's far more than hoses can get on a fire all at once, and it can be the best way to attack fires that are difficult for ground crews to reach. But pilots sometimes have to fly a long way to scoop up water, and in drought-prone areas, natural sources can sometimes dry up or diminish so they're hard to draw from. In Riverside County, helicopters have had to fly up to 10 miles to reach a water source, costing critical time in battling fires. On a remote plot in the Coachella Valley town of Cabazon, Glenn Chavez stood on a ladder and peered into an empty Heli-Hydrant. A radio in hand, he clicked a button to activate the system and watched as water roared into the tank. In about six minutes, it filled with 8,500 gallons. Chavez, a general contractor, was testing the Cabazon Water District's latest investment — a second Heli-Hydrant that local officials are counting on to help protect the town. At $300,000, it cost less than the average price of a single-family home in Cabazon. 'Living in a beautiful desert community, you're going to have risks of fire,' said Michael Pollack, the district's general manager. 'And to have these Heli-Hydrants is a major advantage. People will have a little bit of comfort knowing that they have another tool for fighting fires in their community.' Pilots can remotely activate the tanks from half a mile away, with the tank typically filling quickly from a city's water system. Helicopters can fill up in less than a minute. Once a tank is activated, solar panels and backup batteries ensure the system can be used during power outages. And at night, lights from the tank and a nearby tower guide pilots to it. In November, fire responders in San Diego County put the product to the test when the 48-acre Garden fire in Fallbrook, a community known for its avocado groves, prompted evacuation orders and warnings. Helicopters tapped the tank nearly 40 times. Pilot Ben Brown said its proximity to the fire saved not just time but fuel. 'They're great for when you don't have other water sources,' he said. 'The more dip sites, especially in some of the more arid environments in the county, the better.' Heli-Hydrants have raised some concerns about their placement in urban areas where houses, buildings and power lines can be obstacles to flight and they might have to squeeze into tighter spaces. In those cases, firefighters may choose to fly farther to a natural source that gives a helicopter more room, said Warren Voth, a deputy pilot with the San Diego County Sheriff's Department. A pilot's goal, for safety, is to always face the wind while entering and exiting an area, and a firefighting copter needs room to accomplish that. In some cases, the municipal systems needed to fill Heli-Hydrants could go empty during major fires. As the Palisades fire burned, three million-gallon tanks that helped pressurize L.A. city hydrants in the Pacific Palisades ran dry as demand soared and fire-damaged pipes leaked. Other times, helicopters just can't access them. When winds are fierce, flying is nearly impossible; hurricane-force winds that supercharged the Palisades and Eaton infernos initially grounded firefighting aircraft. When multiple helicopters respond to large blazes, they can't all use the Heli-Hydrant. And smoke can make it hard to see the tank. Portable water tanks can accomplish some of the things that Heli-Hydrants do, but can require time, people and equipment to set up. Areas where wildland vegetation intersects with human development have always been vulnerable to fires, but more people are living in them today, and climate change is creating conditions that can make these regions drier and more flammable. Jake Wiley has seen intensifying wildfires devastate his community. Two blazes — in 2007 and 2017 — collectively scorched more than 400 structures in San Diego. The last one forced Wiley, now general manager for the Rainbow Municipal Water District, to evacuate. That fire also prompted local agencies to install a Heli-Hydrant. And when the Garden fire erupted in November, it played a big role helping firefighters protect homes. 'It seems like when you've seen the worst, you haven't yet,' Wiley said. 'Anything we can do helps.' Pineda and Peterson write for the Associated Press.
Yahoo
11-05-2025
- Yahoo
Tour bus crash kills one and injures 32 in Los Angeles area
One person has died and dozens were hospitalized after a tour bus crashed in the greater Los Angeles area early Sunday morning. The bus collided with an SUV, which was fully engulfed in flames by the time emergency responders arrived, according to the L.A. County Fire Department. Thirty-two people have been hospitalized, with two in critical condition. The Mother's Day tragedy occurred on the Route 60 freeway in Hacienda Heights, a community in the suburban San Gabriel Valley to the east of Los Angeles. California Highway Patrol officer Zachary Salazar told KTLA 5 that the driver of the SUV died while trapped inside the vehicle after it caught on fire. The fire department shared in an update that out of the 32 people transported to the hospital, 26 suffered minor injuries. About half of the people on board were uninjured, as 31 people were able to leave the scene without hospital care. Although no fire spread to the tour bus, KTLA 5 reported that the bus was left with a shattered windshield and major front-end damage. A witness told the local news station that the crash happened 'so quick' and that 'everyone tried to stop, but there was just not enough time.' This article was originally published on
NBC News
11-05-2025
- NBC News
Tour bus crash kills one and injures 32 in Los Angeles area
One person has died and dozens were hospitalized after a tour bus crashed in the greater Los Angeles area early Sunday morning. The bus collided with an SUV, which was fully engulfed in flames by the time emergency responders arrived, according to the L.A. County Fire Department. Thirty-two people have been hospitalized, with two in critical condition. The Mother's Day tragedy occurred on the 60 Freeway in Hacienda Heights, a city in the suburban San Gabriel Valley to the east of Los Angeles. California Highway Patrol officer Zachary Salazar told KTLA 5 that the driver of the SUV died while trapped inside the vehicle after it caught on fire. The fire department shared in an update that out of the 32 people transported to the hospital, 26 suffered minor injuries. About half of the people on board were uninjured, as 31 people were able to leave the scene without hospital care. Although no fire spread to the tour bus, KTLA 5 reported that the bus was left with a shattered windshield and major front-end damage. A witness told the local news station that the crash happened 'so quick' and that 'everyone tried to stop, but there was just not enough time.'
