California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Thursday announced a civil rights investigation into how delayed evacuation orders affected west Altadena during the Eaton Fire, a fast-moving wildfire that erupted last year near Los Angeles. Bonta said the inquiry is prompted by months of conversations with community members and fire survivors concerned about unequal impacts on the west side of town, which is an unincorporated community in Los Angeles County.
The state’s top prosecutor said the Eaton Fire was one of two major blazes that began on Jan. 7, 2025. He said it killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 structures, and he framed the civil-rights question around whether emergency response decisions led to a delayed evacuation notice that disproportionately affected west Altadena.
Bonta said the “overarching question is whether ‘unlawful race, disability, or age-based discrimination in the emergency response result in a delayed evacuation notification that disproportionately impacted west Altadena,’” according to his remarks. He said most of the investigation’s attention will focus on the Los Angeles County Fire Department, including whether existing systems played a role in delayed evacuation notifications and any disparities in emergency response.
Bonta said, and the Associated Press reported, that the timeline differed between the east and west portions of Altadena as the fire spread. All but one of the deaths occurred in west Altadena, and officials and residents described evacuation orders coming later there than on the east side.
The Associated Press reported that by midnight—roughly six hours after the fire sparked—none of the neighborhoods west of Altadena’s North Lake Avenue had been issued an evacuation warning. The report said evacuation orders expanded significantly after 3 a.m., and it included one account from a west Altadena resident who said she did not receive alerts to leave until hours after she had already packed up and fled.
Bonta said he expects officials to voluntarily comply with the investigation and share information with investigators. “The families forever changed because of the Eaton Fire deserve nothing less than our full commitment,” he said, describing the state’s rationale for seeking answers and accountability around the evacuation process.
Los Angeles County, in a statement, said it will fully cooperate and pointed to prior independent reviews of the county’s response. The county said it “has fully cooperated in all independent reviews,” and that “none have found any discriminatory or structural bias in the County’s response.” The statement also said county officials believe the attorney general will find responders “did the best they could under unprecedented and extreme conditions as they fought to save lives, homes, and businesses.”
Altadena for Accountability, a group of fire survivors that pressed for an investigation into the county’s fire response over the past year, welcomed Bonta’s announcement. In a statement, Gina Clayton-Johnson said she was “heartened” by the prospect of answers, saying “Losing my home and seeing my parents lose theirs was devastating. I’m heartened today knowing that we have a real pathway to answers and accountability for what went wrong,” and she added that the announcement was a “big day” for fire survivors and future victims of climate-related disasters.
The Associated Press noted that an after-action report on evacuations, issued in 2025 by an independent group, found that the county had “conflicting and outdated policies, protocols” and procedures about who had authority in evacuation decisions. The report did not explain why evacuation orders in west Altadena came late. The AP also cited prior major fires—including California’s 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, Hawaii’s 2023 Lahaina Fire, and the 2021 Marshall Fire near Denver—where a patchwork of alert systems and delays in getting critical information have raised concerns, particularly among older residents and people with disabilities.
Chauncia Willis-Johnson, founder of the Institute for Diversity and Inclusion in Emergency Management, said emergency-management decision-making can include built-in biases that assume people have access to vehicles or that evacuations can happen on a set schedule. “I don’t think any emergency response manager purposely hurts anyone,” Willis-Johnson said. “But when you’re not prioritizing historically marginalized populations that don’t have the resources to get alerts or warnings any other way … you’re leaving them behind.”