LA County Eaton Fire Response Gets Bonta Civil Rights Probe (2)

California AG Rob Bonta announced a civil rights investigation into Los Angeles County’s emergency response to the Eaton Fire, which damaged nearly 60% of Altadena’s Black households.

The investigation is the office’s first civil rights investigation into a California wildfire, Bonta said, adding he’s “frankly not sure how many there have been around the country.”

It will assess whether the county’s fire response had a disparate impact on residents based on race, disability, or age, Bonta said in a news conference Thursday. This legal theory of disparate impact is one the Trump administration has directed the US Justice Department to stop using when enforcing civil rights laws.

“The investigation we’ve launched 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 during the Eaton fire violate state anti-discrimination and disability rights laws?” Bonta said.

The Thursday announcement breaks a year of silence from Bonta’s office, as Altadena residents pressed for an investigation. Bonta said his team has worked for months “to get to this point where we thought an announcement was appropriate today” and that he understands residents are frustrated the announcement took so long.

Survivors Respond

Wildfire survivors gathered after Bonta’s announcement for a news conference at a burned lot belonging to Kara Vallow, who founded community organization West of Lake. Three Black women who didn’t receive emergency alerts burned to death in their homes on Vallow’s street, she said.

“I carry those three women with me every day,” she said. “I carry the fear they must have felt, the pain they suffered, and I carry the fact that I didn’t stay here to help them every day.”

“We’ve had one solid year of our officials telling us we did not matter, not to warrant an explanation other than a factually incorrect report from a private consulting company that went out of its way to avoid accountability,” Vallow continued, referring to the LA County-commissioned McChrystal Group report, “and continuation of passive indifference on the part of county officials and the command staff leading our first responders.”

The McChrystal Group report, released in September, found unclear county policies and a lack of resources and staffing exacerbated problems with the county’s emergency response. Altadena for Accountability, a group of fire-impacted residents that called for the probe, said the report failed to answer important questions about the fire and didn’t assign accountability.

Bonta’s announcement comes as displaced residents, squeezed by a fire insurance crisis that is fueled by California’s vulnerability to natural disasters, increasingly run out of insurance payments meant to cover the cost of temporary housing. Hundreds have filed lawsuits in state court against Edison International’s Southern California utility, which is widely blamed for the blaze but hasn’t accepted fault. Others are applying for the utility’s settlement program.

Altadena for Accountability outlined the unequal effects of the fire in a January 23 letter following their first meeting with Bonta: Evacuation alerts were sent to the historically Black community of west of Lake Avenue at least eight hours after their neighbors in East Altadena. Just one county fire truck was sent to West Altadena during the first twelve hours of the fire. Eighteen of the 19 residents who died in the fire lived in West Altadena. At least one third of those who died had a disability affecting their movement.

“Altadena residents deserve to know why Lake Ave ‘would come to be a fateful dividing line,’ and whether any impermissible factors—such as race, socioeconomic status, and/or disability—played any role in the County’s disparate emergency response between West and East Altadena,” Altadena for Accountability’s letter said. “These legitimate questions deserve legitimate answers from an independent and thorough investigation that only your office can lead.”

The investigation announced Thursday is focused on the county’s fire department but will look into all other agencies that may help answer questions about why evacuation notices were delayed, Bonta said.

“It’s my hope and my expectation that all public institutions and officials we reach out to over the course of our investigation will voluntarily comply and share the information that we seek,” Bonta said.

Several fire survivors on Thursday drew parallels between the Eaton Fire and injustices in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, and the Lahaina Fire in Maui, Hawaii.

The unprecedented launch of a wildfire response civil rights investigation will give future disaster survivors “something that they can point to,” said Gina Clayton-Johnson, co-founder of Altadena for Accountability, and founder and executive director of Essie Justice Group.

“When a Black community was abandoned in West Altadena,” she said, “everyone came together to ensure civil rights laws were enforced. ‘We are going to do that too,’ they’ll say.”