After faulty cell alerts during fire emergencies, LA County is overhauling its system

Los Angeles County’s top emergency manager said Saturday that the county’s overhaul of its emergency notification system is nearly complete after it sent out a series of faulty emergency alerts that prompted millions of residents across Los Angeles to prepare to evacuate amid the ongoing firestorm.

Kevin McGowan, director of LA County’s Office of Emergency Management, said at a morning news conference that the problem was caused by an error in the software system.

County officials, he said, are working with federal and state officials and cell phone carriers to make sure outdated alerts are flushed out of the system so people don’t continue to receive alerts that aren’t meant for them.

To ensure the problem doesn’t continue, the county on Friday began transitioning from a county-run platform to a state system, run by the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, for any future emergency alerts that ping cell phones in a designated geographic area.

“We believe this process is largely complete, and we are working with federal partners and providers to ensure there is no repeat of the alerts being issued in error,” McGowan said.

The garbled messages that bombarded residents’ phones several times Thursday and Friday — including in the middle of the night — sparked confusion and panic in the sprawling county of 10 million. Residents across the city were already on edge as fires raged from Pacific Palisades to Altadena, killing at least 13 and damaging and destroying more than 12,000 structures.

“This is an emergency message from the Los Angeles County Fire Department,” the alerts said. “An EVACUATION WARNING has been issued in your area.”

McGowan blamed a software glitch for the first faulty alert that went off around 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon, accidentally setting off a countywide evacuation alert rather than a targeted alert to affected residents.

According to a preliminary assessment, the false echo alerts that continued to go off Friday occurred as cell towers came back online after they were initially shut down because of the fires, McGowan said. The outdated warnings were stored in the system and after the towers came back online, they began to be released to the public.

“This has been frustrating, unacceptable, and the public’s greatest need is accurate information, and we are moving quickly to restore that,” McGowan said Saturday.

Friday night, the county announced it would suspend its current alarm system, operated by a third-party vendor called Genasys, and switch all local emergency alarms to the separate CalOES system as Genasys conducted tests to determine what caused the failure.

“Our preliminary investigation indicates that an accurate, properly targeted alert emanated from LA County’s Emergency Operations Center at approximately 4 p.m. on Thursday, January 9,” the county said late Friday in a statement. “However, after it left the EOC, the alert was mistakenly sent out to nearly 10 million residents across the county.”

The county is working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Communications Commission, in addition to cell phone carriers, to find out how the stream of faulty alarms continued to sound and correct the problem.

Officials stressed Saturday that residents do not need to sign up to receive future wireless alerts under the new system.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said Saturday that cellphones in an area that requires an alarm will “get the alarm automatically.” However, if residents want further clarification or updates, they can call 211 or sign up for additional text and email notifications at alertla.org.

McGowan said the county was also working to establish a more robust, multi-layered messaging system and improve its “two-to-one call” network that connects one person by phone to two other people.

“These emergency alerts helped us evacuate hundreds of thousands of people in immediate life-saving measures. We have undoubtedly saved lives,” he said. “But the last few days have also reminded us that technology is vulnerable to the consequences of a disaster, especially unprecedented.”