LOS ANGELES (CNS) – The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a motion Tuesday, Oct. 6, calling for a review of hundreds of findings and recommendations in a newly released report examining the January 2025 Southern California wildfires.
The motion by Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Lindsey Horvath directs County Counsel to work with the county Fire Department, Office of Emergency Management, Sheriff’s Department and Department of Public Works to provide a written report analyzing findings from the Southern California Fires Incident Analysis Report by UL Research Institutes’ Fire Safety Research Institute.
The report, commissioned by the Governor’s Office and released Friday, contains 175 findings and 266 recommendations addressing emergency preparedness and management, utilities, weather and vegetation, evacuations, transportation, fire and law enforcement operations, fatalities and the built environment.
“The findings in this report are serious and Eaton Fire survivors deserve to know that our county is listening and will act on what we have learned,” Barger said. “We cannot change what happened on Jan. 7, but we have an obligation to learn from it, and I will keep pressing until those lessons become real improvements in how we prepare for and respond to disasters. Survivors’ voices are central to this work. Their experience should shape the reforms that make our emergency systems stronger before the next disaster strikes.”
Under the motion, County Counsel and the participating departments will identify areas in which the report’s recommendations overlap with two county After-Action Reviews conducted by the McChrystal Group.
Those reviews examined alert notification and evacuation, along with recovery and repopulation. The county will also compare the findings with a Citygate Associates investigation of the critical overnight hours of the Eaton Fire.
County Counsel was also directed to identify recommendations unique to the Fire Safety Research Institute report and determine immediate and near-term actions the county can take without duplicating work already underway.
“Every after-action report deepens our understanding of what happened during the January 2025 wildfires – and our responsibility to act on what we learn,” Horvath said. “The state plays a critical role in emergency preparedness and response, and we must look across these findings to identify what worked, where gaps remain and what more must be done. These reports cannot sit on a shelf – we owe it to the people we lost, the survivors rebuilding their lives and every community facing the next emergency to turn these lessons into action.”
County departments have already been directed by the board to begin implementing recommendations from the McChrystal Group’s After-Action Reviews.
The Fire Safety Research Institute report concluded that outcomes from the Palisades and Eaton fires were shaped by “multiple interlinked systems rather than any single factor or failure,” while identifying shortcomings in evacuation procedures, emergency staffing, communications and wildfire preparedness.
The report found that LA County agencies’ policies and procedures for evacuation notifications and population movement did not fully address the processes and tasks needed for effective execution during the Eaton Fire. It also found that an evacuation order for areas west of Lake Avenue was issued as fire conditions were already affecting the area, reducing the time residents had to evacuate.
The report also found that LA County Sheriff’s Department patrol staffing remained at normal levels on Jan. 7, 2025, with no broader pre-positioning or increased operational staffing in preparation for the extreme fire risk. Both city and county emergency management systems were described as under-resourced and understaffed.
The county Fire Department, however, held over all off-going shifts on the morning of Jan. 7, increasing staffing from about 1,500 firefighters to nearly 3,000 to battle the Eaton Fire.
The report also found that pre-fire plans for the Palisades and Eaton fire areas were outdated and reportedly were not used, while radio, cellular and dispatch communications systems were quickly overwhelmed.
The Eaton Fire killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,000 structures. The Palisades Fire killed 12 people and destroyed 6,837 structures.