The L.A. Times published an article today entitled "Altadena suffered a ‘catastrophic failure.’ Did unincorporated status hurt fire response?" The article is behind a paywall, but we got a gift copy. Here is the link:

Essentially the article says the people who live in cities threatened or impacted by the Eaton Fire had more ways to receive communication, more focused leadership and more resources dedicated to their communities than did the residents of unincorporated Altadena. The Eaton Fire was a particularly nasty firestorm. It hit Altadena really hard. Residents there, particulary those on the west side of town, had a hard time getting evacuation notices and status updates. Some did not get the word until 6 hours or more after flames were in their community.  Nearby city residents did not experience uncertainty the way Altadena residents did. City residents even had cops to escort them to safety. The emergency has since become a symbol of Altadena's need for better public resources and governance:

The article said that, while Altadena residents appreciated the Eaton Fire's mutual-aid firefighting activity, they have become concerned over issues related to emergency planning, messaging and communications. They feel that their stresses related to inadeqate evacuation response could have been avoided and that the delayed evacuation notice led to people dying unnecessarily. In their view, with proper evacuation notice - as was given for other places in the path of the firestorm - the people who died would have had more than enough time to get out safely. The evacuation delays appear to have involved communication issues with the County Fire Department and County Sheriff. So far, the people and/or entities in charge of their community have not acknowledged their role in  the evacuation problem that resulted in the deaths, despite the passage of time since the disaster.  Altadena residents are very frustrated about that because how the victims died was horrific.

City officials typically handle emergency planning and communications, as the article reported. But unincorporated areas are different. They don't have city officials. Instead, they have to rely on the county's Board of Supervisors. The 5-member L.A. County Board of Supervisors serves almost 10 million people. Altadena is a small part of one of the 5 County Supervisorial Districts, with just 44,000 people among a total unincorporated county population of  around 1 million. Whether or not a Supervisor cares about a community an unincorporated community like Altadena can easily get lost in the noise. As one member of the Altadena Town Council put it,

The Supervisor in charge of the District that includes Altadena has professed her care and concern for Altadena. But the question remains whether the County can actually deliver as she claims. L.A. County is enormous, with more people than 40 individual U.S. states. It strains credibility to imagine how a tiny spec of a community within the Supervisor's vast span of responsibility will ever get the level of service it would get if it was responsible for itself. Before the fire, Altadena was known as a great place to live - to own a home, to raise a family, to know one's neighbors. Will it be rebuilt as such? If it was a city, that would clearly be Job One. The County will no doubt try to do its best, but for Altadena's Supervisorial District, rebuilding Altadena to the satisfaction of its fire victims cannot be the priority within the Supervisor's large span of attention; there is too much else to do. 

The people of Altadena do not feel they are getting a legitimate return from their investment of municipal tax money. They think their leaders are avoiding accountability. The communication problems at the start of the fire were probably indications of what's to come down the road for the residents and businesses of unincorporated Altadena. Local control is critical and they don't have it.