Not sending evacuation alerts to West Altadena in the early hours of Eaton fire is not the result of a technological error, according to the company which provides the county of the county of emergency alert software.
Until the declaration of Richard Danforth, responsible for Genasys, it was not clear if the failure was due to software problems – or if, during a chaotic night, the county managers made mistakes and confused the alerts.
“The system was increasing and operational,” said Danforth at a zoom meeting on Tuesday presented as a town hall for some of the company’s worried shareholders.
The company, which provides emergency alert software to governments across the country, found itself several times in the titles while the County of Los Angeles faces a meticulous examination of the failure of the evacuation alert. The county had started using Genasys software a month before the start of Eaton fire on January 7, The times reported.
The 17 deaths due to the fire occurred west of Lake avenue, which received evacuation alerts almost 3:30 in the morning – long after the fire torn the district, the Times previously reported. The areas east of Lake Avenue, on the other hand, obtained several evacuation alerts.
“Why were these messages not sent – we know that it was not technology,” said Steve Sickler, vice -president of Genasys field operations on the call.
Brian Algiers, a senior vice-president of the company, said that the longest delay between when the field officials ordered an alert and when he hit the mobile phones was 14 minutes. The average was five and a half minutes, he said.
The county of the has gone from its previous emergency alert system to Genasys in the fall, spending $ 321,000 for a year of software, according to the county agreement with the company. The county quickly moved To put the new system online, raising questions about the time that managers have allocated to debug software and train employees on new technology.
Sickler said he had visited the county emergency command center the week after the fire burst and had found his system for sending “very refined” requests.
“I know there were speculations on … have people been trained?” Were they familiar enough with the system? He said. “They clearly had a breakdown process.”
The County officials of the County told journalists that decisions at the time and where to send evacuation alerts are taken in coordination with the Comté emergency management office, the sheriff service and the county fire service. The county hired an external consulting company, The McChrystal groupTo examine how the evacuation alerts were treated during forest fires.
Local members of the Congress also launched a investigation With regard to a defective evacuation order intended for residents near Kenneth’s fire was sent to the county on January 9, the alarming residents already at the limit which were miles of any danger.
Danforth said on Tuesday that the county officials of the Genasys software correctly used a polygon that would only make residents near the fire, which started in West Hills. But the shape they drawn with the software somehow disappeared after configuring the alert, and the system was lacking to send it throughout the county.
He said Genasys had made a temporary solution.
“We have never been able to reproduce this error in our software. Is this our software? I don’t know, “he said. “Over time, I’m sure we’ll get there.”