The Los Angeles County Fire Department mistakenly sent an evacuation warning text message across Los Angeles County on Thursday afternoon, battling the deadliest fire in Los Angeles history and causing further panic and confusion for an already traumatized population.
The text message was sent to residents across Los Angeles County at approximately 3:57 p.m. PT. It says, “New: This is an emergency message from the Los Angeles County Fire Department. An evacuation warning has been issued for your area. Please be alert to all threats and prepare to evacuate. Gather your supplies. Continue to monitor local weather, news, and our webpage alertla.org for more information.
It was quickly noticed on social media that a warning had been sent countywide.
Eventually, the Los Angeles Department of Emergency Management's X account issued a correction noting that the alert had been sent in error.
The author received a false alert on my cell phone, which appears to have been sent to some residents, but has not yet received a text message correction.
The lack of quick remediation through the same mechanism by which false alerts were sent prevents residents who may not be on social media from seeing new notifications, creating additional stress. . In fact, residents are likely to follow the instructions of the false alarm and gather their “loved ones, pets, and essentials” in preparation to flee their homes.
Los Angeles County's response to the fires has been plagued by confusion, confusion, and a lack of reliable and consistent information from government sources. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D), who was in Ghana this week after the deadliest fire in the city's history, told a news conference Wednesday that desperate residents should go to the URL He said he could find help.
“If you need help, emergency information, resources and shelter are available,” Bass said. “All of these can be found at the URL.”
“People of Los Angeles, we need to work together to get through this,” she concluded, without correcting her mistakes or providing the public with correct sources of information.
Los Angeles County residents rely on an app called Watch Duty, created by a nonprofit group using data from government sources and volunteers. The app added 600,000 users in the last 24 hours seeking real-time updates and important information. “We rely on hundreds of volunteers, including active and retired firefighters, to help,” Breitbart News' Lucas Nolan reported.
It's unclear why actual city and state officials couldn't develop similar apps to coordinate information in life-or-death situations like today.
Multiple simultaneous wildfires this week have burned more than 33,000 acres in the Los Angeles area. destroyed tens of thousands of structures, killed At least seven people have been killed, more than 170,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, nearly 1 million residents have lost power, and so far the damage has been more than $52 billion. The worst of the fires remain uncontained and continue to spread to new areas and spark new fires as the Santa Ana wind weather warning continues into Friday.
