A ‘dangerously unacceptable breakdown’ led to errant or delayed evacuation warnings in LA

While officials sort out the debacles, the state has temporarily taken over emergency warnings for the county of 10 million people.

(CNN) — If you work in one part of town and live in another, you might not get an evacuation warning if your home is in the path of disaster.

If you do get an evacuation alert, the message might not tell you the location.

And if cell towers get knocked offline by the disaster, you might not get any warnings until hours after they’re sent.

Myriad problems have plagued Los Angeles County’s alert system as wildfires keep torching America’s most populous county. While officials sort out the debacles, the state has temporarily taken over emergency warnings for the county of 10 million people.

The fiascos highlight vulnerabilities not just in Southern California, but nationwide.

“This is a concern that people should have all over the country – be you in earthquake country or fire country or floods or hurricanes,” said former Los Angeles city controller Ron Galperin, who audited the city’s emergency alert system twice in the past decade.

“This experience, I hope, will provide some lessons for the rest of the country.”

Evacuation warnings came 12 hours late … and many were incorrect

The debacles started January 9, shortly after the Kenneth Fire broke out in the western part of the San Fernando Valley. Around 4 p.m., officials tried to send an evacuation warning to cell phones in just the areas of nearby Calabasas and Agoura Hills.

“The first technical glitch is that it went out county-wide, instead of to the affected area,” said Bryan La Sota, emergency management coordinator for Los Angeles County’s Office of Emergency Management.

So millions of people incorrectly received this urgent message on their cell phones:

“NEW: This is an emergency message from the Los Angeles County Fire Department. An EVACUATION WARNING has been issued for your area. Remain vigilant of any threats and be ready to evacuate. Gather loved ones, pets, and supplies. Continue to monitor local news, weather, and the webpage alertla.org for more information.”

The warning did not say it was only for the “Kenneth Fire” or “Calabasas and Agoura Hills areas” – fueling panic across Los Angeles County.

After discovering the alert went to far too many people, “We had to cancel that one,” La Sota told CNN. Another alert followed:

“Disregard last EVACUATION WARNING,” read a follow-up message sent about 22 minutes after the first, according to CNN’s review of the alerts. “It was for Kenneth Fire Only. AlertLA.org for more information.”

But the problems continued Friday, when residents woke up to a startling pre-dawn alert:

“An EVACUATION WARNING has been issued for your area,” the message read, repeating the same language as the errant message sent about 12 hours earlier. One resident received Friday’s message twice, about 34 minutes apart, according to CNN’s review of the alerts.

The evacuation warnings turned out to be duplicates of the flawed Kenneth Fire alerts sent the day before.

By Friday, all Kenneth Fire evacuation warnings had already been lifted. But residents had no idea the pre-dawn alerts were outdated or didn’t affect them, because the warnings didn’t say which areas were impacted.

Emergency officials apologized for the mishaps. They said technical glitches – not a human being – sent incorrect or expired evacuation alerts as flames engulfed houses in various parts of the county.

“Los Angeles County shares our residents’ anger and frustration about erroneous emergency alerts,” the county said Friday.

Authorities have not specified what the technical glitch was January 9, when an “alert was erroneously sent out to nearly 10 million residents,” Los Angeles County said.

“Genasys, a vendor that operates the software for the County’s emergency alert messaging, is part of our review and is conducting testing to determine how the original notification was sent far outside the intended geographic area.”

Genasys is still investigating what went wrong January 9, a representative told CNN this week. In the meantime, “We have added additional safeguards into the software to ensure this cannot happen within our platform,” Genasys said.

As for the outdated evacuation warnings blasted a day late on Friday, county officials blame cell phone towers going offline.

“We’ve made the preliminary determination that the (Friday) alerts happened as cell towers came back online after they were knocked offline due to this disaster,” said Kevin McGowan, director of Los Angeles County’s Office of Emergency Management.

“The outdated alerts were cached in the system, and as they came back online, started being released to the public,” McGowan said. He said officials are working with cell phone providers “to make sure that all of these outdated alerts are flushed from the cell phone towers so that this ceases.”

But even if the cell towers stayed online, many residents might not know whether their house is under an evacuation alert.

Why you might not get evacuation warnings

Across the US, agencies warn residents of looming disasters using IPAWS – the Integrated Public Alert & Warning System – which is owned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

For wireless emergency alerts, a local agency sends an urgent message to the IPAWS network. The system then relays that message to wireless carriers, which send the emergency warning to specific cell phone towers in affected areas.

The problem: Residents don’t get notified based on where they live. They get notified based on where their cell phones happen to be at the time.

In other words, if you’re at work on one side of town, but your house is on the verge of burning down on the other side of town, you might not get an evacuation warning because your cell phone is closer to a different tower.

So unless you opt in to a more tailored alert system or use a third-party app such as Watch Duty, you might miss critical cell phone warnings when you’re away from home.

Many cities and counties have more tailored warning systems, but residents must opt in to them. La Sota encouraged Los Angeles County residents to register their addresses at AlertLA.org to get messages specific to their neighborhoods.

But getting alerts to the right people is just one challenge. Making sure the messages have all the needed information is another.

Wonky maps, missing details and no timestamps

While Los Angeles County blamed technical glitches for the erroneous and outdated evacuation warnings, a CNN analysis found vague language, incomplete details and burdensome instructions also hindered residents from knowing whether they needed to evacuate.

There were no time stamps: Residents who woke up to errant evacuation alerts Friday had no idea the warnings were a day old. The outdated alerts were delayed in reaching cell phones because cell phone towers had been knocked offline.

An easy way to make sure residents know when an alert was issued is for agencies to include the date and time within the message.

There were no locations listed: Some residents received wireless emergency alerts far from where they lived – but they had no clue whether their house was at risk of burning down because no location was listed.

The alerts didn’t name specific neighborhoods. Instead, they said: “An EVACUATION WARNING has been issued for your area” – based solely on where a person’s cell phone is located.

La Sota acknowledged the problem and said his agency is planning to add locations to messages in the future.

“We’re definitely working with our team to make sure that we put them in there,” he told CNN.

There’s no map in the warnings: The text alerts directed residents to “the webpage alertla.org for more information.” But some users might not have Wi-Fi or cellular data to be able to open the link.

Even if they can open the link, residents then have to scroll down, toggle an interactive map and zoom in to see whether their neighborhood is included.

Galperin suggested agencies minimize the burden on residents by sharing a screengrab of a map showing the latest area under an evacuation warning.

“My own experience has been frustrating with this as well,” the former LA city controller said.

In recent days, as his family received wildfire alerts from several different agencies, “I got forwarded a notice by my husband, which said, ‘See the map below’ – but then there was no map,” Galperin said. “And then I clicked for more information to make sure I was getting all the notices … but it wouldn’t let me access the system unless I put in my password.”

When an agency “wants (you) to find your damn password, that’s not a very reassuring thing,” Galperin said. “It just adds to frustration.”

What residents and agencies across the US can learn

The mishaps in Los Angeles County illustrate the need for clear, consistent guidance on best practices for emergency alerts, Galperin said.

“There are a lot of other kinds of national disasters, and it would be really good to have leadership from the federal government and from FEMA in such a way that it is consistent across the nation - as opposed to every city and county reinventing the wheel for themselves.”

He also said agencies should consider posting evacuation alerts on electronic billboards and working with third-party vendors to see whether they can help alert the public more effectively.

Residents can take action, too, by asking their local or state officials what emergency alert plans are in place. “Whichever part of the country you are in … ask them, ‘Are we prepared? How are we prepared?’” Galperin suggested.

Los Angeles County acknowledged the messaging mishaps marked a “serious breach of public trust” and said it’s conducting an in-depth investigation into “this dangerously unacceptable breakdown in the system.”

The lack of clear details in recent warnings, along with several erroneous alerts, have led some residents to take the messages less seriously.

But authorities say Los Angeles County’s emergency alerts have saved countless lives, giving residents time to flee before flames engulf their homes.

La Sota urged residents to take warnings seriously while officials try to improve and learn from the errant messaging.

“We truly apologize and take ownership of fixing this, why this happened. But it’s important to be able to continue to receive alerts,” he said.

“Ultimately, many of these alerts have saved lives.”

CNN’s Julia Vargas Jones, Jack Hannah, Veronica Rocha, Elizabeth Wolfe and Amanda Musa contributed to this report.

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