California launches civil rights probe into botched evacuations in historically Black Altadena
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More than a year after the devastating Eaton fire — and following months of mounting pressure from survivors — California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has opened a civil rights investigation into the fire preparations and response, looking particularly at potential disparities in historically Black west Altadena.
“My office will be investigating whether there was race, age, or disability discrimination in the emergency response in west Altadena,” Bonta said Thursday. “Specifically, we’ll be looking at whether the systems and structures at play contributed to a delay in the county’s evacuation notice.”
For the record:
9:28 a.m. Feb. 13, 2026In an earlier version of this story, the photo caption transposed the names of Gina Clayton-Johnson and Shimica Gaskins embracing at the demonstration.
The investigation comes after a series of Times investigations found that west Altadena, a historically Black community, received late evacuation alerts and limited firefighting resources as the fire raged out of control — particularly when compared to the more affluent eastern half of the unincorporated town. Fire damage was particularly widespread in west Altadena, and almost all of the fire’s 19 deaths occurred there — among them a 54-year-old woman whose family claimed she died because of the delayed evacuation alerts.
Black Altadena residents disproportionately experienced damage from the conflagration, researchers have found.
Those issues have stirred growing concern and anger in west Altadena, where residents — most of whom are still displaced — have continued to demand answers about the failed evacuation alerts and disparate resources, with little success. Thursday’s announcement, however, brought a renewed sense of hope for accountability and oversight, for Altadena as well as other disadvantaged communities that may also face climate-related emergencies in the future.
“This is a win for more than Altadena. The history of climate disaster is also a history of abandoning Black and brown people, disabled people, elderly people,” Gina Clayton-Johnson, a leader of the Altadena for Accountability group that pushed for this investigation, said at a news conference that followed Bonta’s announcement Thursday. “This civil rights investigation sets a precedent for all survivors of future climate-driven disasters, not just in L.A. County and California, but across the country.”
Residents of west Altadena are escalating calls for answers and accountability a year after officials failed to issue their community timely evacuation alerts and deploy needed firefighting resources.
In a joint statement, Los Angeles County officials said its agencies will fully cooperate with the new probe, but said “we believe the attorney general will find that emergency responders did the best they could under unprecedented and extreme conditions as they fought to save lives, homes, and businesses.”
The statement noted that, thus far, no other reviews “found any discriminatory or structural bias in the County’s response.”
In a statement, the L.A. County Professional Peace Officers Assn. defended the efforts of emergency personnel and said they “support a fair and thoughtful review of the response.”
“As this process moves forward, we must honor both the pain of the community and the dedication of the first responders who acted to save lives,” the group said.
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Bonta called the probe an unprecedented move by the California Department of Justice, driven by “disturbing facts” from the Eaton fire response and the “disproportionately devastating impact it had on the historically Black neighborhood of west Altadena.”
He believes this is the first time in California — and possibly the country — that a civil rights investigation has been opened related to the emergency response to a fire.
“This investigation is historic,” said Shimica Gaskins, an Eaton fire survivor and Altadena for Accountability member, speaking from the empty lot where one of her neighbor’s homes stood before the blaze. “It can set a precedent that disaster response is not just a logistical issue but a civil rights issue ... Every life must be protected with equal urgency. We cannot bring back those we lost, but we can honor them by demanding truth, reform and justice.”
While she and many Altadena advocates celebrated the announcement of the investigation — some held up signs reading, “Thank you AG Bonta,” and “Safety is a civil right!” — Gaskins was clear that Thursday marked only the “beginning of accountability and healing.”
Bonta said the independent investigation will initially focus on the L.A. County Fire Department, but the scope could expand.
“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 ... violate state anti-discrimination and disability rights laws?” Bonta said at an earlier news conference Thursday morning.
As Altadena is an unincorporated town, its emergency services are overseen by L.A. County government, particularly the county’s Office of Emergency Management, fire and sheriff’s departments.
L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents Altadena, said she welcomes the attorney general’s investigation.
“If there were gaps, we must acknowledge them. If there were disparities, we must confront them,” Barger wrote in a statement. “And if systems need to change, we must change them.”
While Bonta acknowledged that there have been other investigations into the fire response, some of which are still ongoing, he said his agency was uniquely positioned to determine “if there was disparate impact based on race.”
That theory, called disparate impact liability in law circles, is a legal tool used to determine potential discrimination that can occur without intent. The Trump administration last year ordered federal agencies to stop considering it, but Bonta said that executive order has no bearing on his office’s work.
The Eaton fire destroyed more than 9,000 structures, mostly homes, across Altadena and parts of Pasadena and Sierra Madre.
Whereas eastern Altadena was ordered to evacuate within an hour of the Eaton fire’s ignition on Jan. 7, 2025, residents living west of Lake Avenue — the town’s unofficial dividing line — didn’t receive any evacuation alerts for almost nine hours. Evacuation warnings were never issued for the area.
When an evacuation order was issued for west Altadena just before 3:30 a.m. on Jan. 8, smoke and flames had already threatened the area for hours and been reported through several 911 calls. Many residents have told The Times harrowing stories of narrowly escaping smoke-filled homes and streets filled with raining embers. Almost all have said there were no emergency vehicles around.
A Times analysis of L.A. County fire truck locations found that the majority of crews remained east of Lake Avenue even as the fire shifted west and some crews on the ground noticed the area west of Lake Avenue overwhelmed by flames.
Some areas of west Altadena weren’t ordered to evacuate until just before 6 a.m., almost 12 hours after the fire started.
The disparity between the town’s two sections is historically significant. West Altadena became one of L.A.’s first middle-class Black neighborhoods in the 1960s, partly because discriminatory redlining practices for years kept Black homebuyers from settling east of Lake Avenue.
Eastern Altadena remains much whiter and more affluent than those neighborhoods to the west, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
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The L.A. County Board of Supervisors last year ordered a review of its emergency alert system after the delays in west Altadena and other issues, but that report primarily recommended high-level systemic improvements. However, the report did detail moments when fire officials had the chance to issue more prompt evacuation orders for west Altadena but failed to do so. The report didn’t explain what went wrong there.
The L.A. County Fire Department says it has since opened its own investigation into those delayed evacuation alerts. But agency spokesperson Heidi Oliva on Thursday would only confirm the probe was still underway.
A state-ordered investigation into both the Eaton and Palisades fires, being conducted by the independent nonprofit Fire Safety Research Institute, is also ongoing and is expected to be completed midyear.
The California state auditor also recently launched an independent review of response efforts during the Eaton and Palisades fires.
Bonta credited the community for working to hold public agencies accountable for the wildfire response.
The complaint blames a company’s predesigned evacuation zones for keeping residents east of Lake Avenue from getting timely evacuation orders.
“The west Altadena community rang the alarm and brought compelling evidence to the attention of my office,” Bonta said in a statement.
“We must let the facts uncovered by our investigation determine what went wrong here, but one thing holds true: The people of west Altadena deserve answers to their questions and deserve institutions that are responsive to their concerns, and institutions they can trust moving forward.”
Although Bonta’s announcement came more than a year after The Times exposed the late evacuation alerts and months after investigations confirmed there were limited firefighting resources in west Altadena, many Altadenans still said they were happy to finally see progress.
“We fought for this investigation,” Sylvie Andrews, a fire survivor and advocate for west Altadena, said. “More than a report, more than an audit, we deserve an investigation so that we can learn, and we deserve accountability so that we can trust again.”
Bonta said he wasn’t sure how long the investigation would take or what the findings might include, but was clear that this was a civil — not criminal — case. He promised to make any conclusions public, when they are complete.
“Our main focus is to make sure that whatever happened here won’t ever happen again,” Bonta said.
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