The company that provided emergency alert software to LA County said that the failure to send evacuation alerts to West Altardner in the early hours of the Eaton fire was not a result of a technical error.
Until the statement by Genasys chief Richard Danforth, it was unclear whether the failure was due to a software problem or that on a chaotic night, county officials made a mistake and exploded the alarm.
“The system has been established and put into operation,” Danfoss said at a Zoom conference on Tuesday.
The company provides emergency alert software to governments across the country, making headlines repeatedly as Los Angeles County scrutinizes failed evacuation alerts. The county has started using Genasys software a month before the Eaton fire began on January 7. Times.
All 17 deaths in the fire occurred west of Lake Avenue and the alarm was not evacuated until 3:30 a.m. – long after the fire passed through, the Times Previous reports. On the other hand, multiple evacuation alerts were obtained in the area east of Lake Avenue.
“Why didn’t this information be sent – we know it’s not technology,” said Steve Sickler, vice president of field operations at Genasys, on the phone.
Brian Alger, the company’s senior vice president, said the longest lag time is 14 minutes when the county sends out an alarm and crash. The average time is 5½ minutes, he said.
Los Angeles County switched from its previous emergency alert system to Genasys in the fall, spending $321,000 on the software, under the county’s agreement with the company. county Move quickly To bring the new system online, questions were raised about how much time the officers allocated to debug software and train new technologies for employees.
Sickler said he visited the county’s emergency command center a week after the fire and found its “very sophisticated” system.
“I know there are speculations… whether people are trained? Are they familiar enough with the system?” he said. “They obviously have a process.”
Los Angeles County officials told reporters that they coordinated decisions on when and where to send evacuation alerts with the county’s Emergency Management Office, the Department of Sheriff and the County Fire Department. The county has hired an external consulting company McChrystal Groupreview how evacuation alerts are handled during wildfires.
Local members of Congress have also launched investigation In a wrong evacuation order provided to residents near the Kenneth Fire on January 9, it shocked residents who were already away from the edge of any danger.
Danfoss said Tuesday that Los Angeles County officials correctly used Genasys software to draw a polygon that would only alert residents near the West Hills fire. However, the shape they used the software disappeared in some way after configuring the alert, and the system defaulted to send it to the countywide.
He said Genasys has released a temporary fix.
“We’ve never been able to copy the error in the software. Is it our software? I don’t know,” he said. “As time goes by, I believe we will do it.”
