False Evacuation Orders Are the Last Thing L.A. Needs
In my neighborhood—a mobile-home park on the western side of Malibu—the power and gas have been out for days, and cell service is intermittent at best. If I drive to the right vantage points, I can see the Palisades Fire and Kenneth Fire—two of the five major fires blazing across Los Angeles—but they are still far away. My home is not in a mandatory evacuation zone or even a warning zone. It is, or is supposed to be, safe. Yet my family’s phones keep blaring with evacuation notices, as they move in and out of service. As far as I can tell, these notices have all been in error. Earlier today, Kevin McGowan, the director of Los Angeles County’s emergency-management office, acknowledged at a press conference that officials knew alerts like these had gone out, acknowledged some of them were wrong, and still had no idea why, or how to keep it from happening again. (The office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) The first alert jolted my phone yesterday afternoon. My …