The Eaton fire led to a tragic loss of life in west Altadena, particularly as evacuation alerts were not sent until much later, reportedly due to actions by county officials rather than technological failures. Emergency alert software provider Genasys clarified that their system was functional and operational during the event. The Los Angeles County's rapid switch to Genasys' software raised questions about the adequacy of training and debugging, especially since they had only implemented the system a month prior to the fire.
"The system was up and operational," said Danforth in a Tuesday Zoom meeting billed as a town hall for some of the company's worried stockholders.
"Why those messages weren't sent - we know it wasn't technology," Steve Sickler, Genasys' vice president of field operations, said on the call.
Brian Alger, a senior vice president with the company, said the longest lag between when the county sent out an alert and when it hit cellphones was 14 minutes.
The county moved quickly to bring the new system online, raising questions about how much time officials allotted for debugging the software and training employees on the new technology.
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