More than a year after the devastating Eaton fire — and following months of mounting pressure from survivors — California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has opened a civil rights investigation into fire preparations and response, including how potential disparities may have affected west Altadena.
“My office will be investigating whether there was race, age, or disability discrimination in the emergency response in west Altadena,” Bonta said in a statement Thursday. “Specifically, we’ll be looking at whether the systems and structures at play contributed to a delay in the county’s evacuation notice and possible disparities in emergency response.”
The investigation comes after a series of Times investigations found that west Altadena, a historically Black community, received late evacuation alerts and limited firefighting resources as the fire raged out of control — particularly when compared to the more affluent eastern half of the unincorporated town. Fire damage was particularly widespread in west Altadena, and almost all of the fire’s 19 deaths occurred there — among them a 54-year-old woman whose family claimed she died because of the delayed evacuation alerts.
Black Altadena residents disproportionately experienced damage from the conflagration, researchers have found.
Those issues have stirred growing concern and anger in west Altadena, where residents — most of whom are still displaced — have continued to demand answers about the failed evacuation alerts and disparate resources, with little success. Thursday’s announcement, however, brought a renewed sense of hope for accountability and oversight, for Altadena as well as other disadvantaged communities that may soon face climate-related emergencies.
“This investigation is expected to enforce a high standard of equity in the dispensation of emergency services during a disaster for all communities regardless of race, disability, or socioeconomic status,” a group of west Altadena residents, Altadena for Accountability, wrote in a news release. The group had urged Bonta to launch such a probe, calling it on Thursday a “trailblazing move for civil rights and environmental justice.”
At a news conference Thursday morning, Bonta specifically named the L.A. County Fire Department as the subject of the investigation.
He said the probe “is driven by one overarching question: did the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s delay in notifying and evacuating the historically black West Altadena community … violate state anti-discrimination and disability rights laws?”
The case will be investigating potential discrimination under the disparate impact theory, a legal strategy that doesn’t require intent to prove discrimination occurred. The theory was blocked last year for use at the federal level by President Trump.
As Altadena is an unincorporated town, its emergency services are overseen by L.A. County government, particularly the county’s Office of Emergency Management, and fire and sheriff’s departments.
A spokesperson for the L.A. County Fire Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new investigation.
“There is a long history of marginalized communities receiving less support during times of crisis,” Shimica Gaskins, a fire survivor and member of the group, said in a statement. She called Bonta’s new civil rights investigation “the most consequential act taken by any official in California for accountability since the fires ravaged Los Angeles.”
The Eaton fire destroyed more than 9,000 structures, mostly homes, across Altadena and parts of Pasadena and Sierra Madre.
Whereas eastern Altadena was ordered to evacuate within an hour of the Eaton fire’s ignition on Jan. 7, 2025, residents living west of Lake Avenue — the town’s unofficial dividing line — didn’t receive any evacuation alerts for almost nine hours. Evacuation warnings were never issued for the area.
When an evacuation order was issued for west Altadena just before 3:30 a.m. on Jan. 8, smoke and flames had already threatened the area for hours and been reported through several 911 calls. Many residents have told The Times harrowing stories of narrowly escaping smoke-filled homes and streets filled with raining embers. Almost all have said there were no emergency vehicles around.
A Times analysis of L.A. County fire truck locations found that the majority of crews remained east of Lake Avenue even as the fire shifted west and some crews on the ground noticed the area west of Lake Avenue overwhelmed by flames.
Some areas of west Altadena weren’t ordered to evacuate until just before 6 a.m., almost 12 hours after the fire started.
The disparity between the town’s two sections is historically significant. West Altadena became one of L.A.’s first middle-class Black neighborhoods in the 1960s, partly because discriminatory redlining practices for years kept Black homebuyers from settling east of Lake Avenue.
Eastern Altadena remains much whiter and more affluent than those neighborhoods to the west, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
The L.A. County Board of Supervisors last year ordered a review of its emergency alert system after the delays in west Altadena and other issues, but that report primarily recommended high-level systemic improvements. However, the report did detail moments when fire officials had the chance to issue more prompt evacuation orders for west Altadena but failed to do so. The report didn’t explain what went wrong there.
The L.A. County Fire Department says it has since opened its own investigation into those delayed evacuation alerts. But agency spokesperson Heidi Oliva on Thursday would only confirm the probe was still underway.
A state-ordered investigation into both the Eaton and Palisades fires, being conducted by the independent nonprofit Fire Safety Research Institute, is also ongoing and is expected to be completed midyear.
The California state auditor also recently launched an independent review of response efforts during the Eaton and Palisades fires.
It wasn’t exactly clear why Bonta and his office waited until more than a year after the fire to open a civil rights investigation, or whether that delay could affect its process or outcomes.
But it appears the case would not have been opened without constant community pressure.
“The west Altadena community rang the alarm and brought compelling evidence to the attention of my office,” Bonta said in a statement. “Alarmingly, we know that evacuation warnings for the historically Black neighborhood of west Altadena came many hours after these same warnings were sent to the rest of Altadena.
“We must let the facts uncovered by our investigation determine what went wrong here, but one thing holds true: The people of west Altadena deserve answers to their questions and deserve institutions that are responsive to their concerns, and institutions they can trust moving forward,” he said.
Although this decision comes months after community members first reached out to Bonta’s office — and more than a year after The Times first reported on the late evacuation alerts — many Altadenans said they were happy to finally see progress.
“No other analysis or report has done what this investigation will do — only the Attorney General has the authority and subpoena power to examine whether our civil rights were violated,” Sylvie Andrews, a fire survivor and advocate for west Altadena, said in a statement. “By launching this investigation, Attorney General Rob Bonta will be asking the questions that survivors, and anyone who might experience a future disaster in Los Angeles County, deserve to hear answered.”
