The families of L.A. wildfire victims confront the failures that prevented escape

As a wildfire tore through Altadena, California, before dawn on Jan. 8, Jackie McDaniels frantically tried to make it to her brother-in-law. He’d called to tell her the flames had reached his house, where he was stuck inside with his son.

“Stay on the phone with me,” Anthony Mitchell begged McDaniels as he waited for a response to his 911 calls. McDaniels was evacuating herself, but turned instead toward his one-story cottage on West Terrace Street.

Mitchell, 68, was her late sister’s husband. Because of diabetes, his leg had been amputated three years ago. And while he may have been able to escape in his wheelchair, he would not leave his son, Justin, 38, who had cerebral palsy and could not get out of bed unassisted. No one was there with them, no caregivers or family, so they’d called for emergency help.

By the time McDaniels arrived, the garage was burning. She watched from the street, still on the phone, pleading with Mitchell to get into his wheelchair. She heard him tell Justin, “Daddy’s coming.”

She hung up and called 911, then opened the front door to a billow of acrid black smoke. Distraught, she flagged down a firefighter who walked the perimeter as the flames grew, telling her that whoever was inside was likely already dead and that he wouldn’t be able to get in and out alive. He told her to flee, too, or she could also lose her chance to escape.

The Mitchells, along with much of Los Angeles County, were caught off guard by monstrous, simultaneous wildfires that ignited Jan. 7 and roared across drought-parched mountainsides on 60 mph winds, killing at least 29 people and destroying thousands of homes. The first hit in the morning on a slope above Pacific Palisades, the second after dusk in Eaton Canyon about 30 miles away.

According to an NBC News analysis of the deaths, most of the victims were over the age of 65 or disabled, or both, making it difficult for some to move quickly without assistance. More than half did not receive evacuation orders until it was nearly too late. Some sought help from emergency workers that never came. Some had lived through so many warnings that they thought these fires would not threaten them. But the fires advanced faster than any they’d seen, and when the flames arrived at their doorsteps, some chose to defend their homes with pool water and garden hoses.

The victims also included an 83-year-old retired Lockheed Martin manager, a 32-year-old former Australian child actor who was blind and had cerebral palsy, and a former Black Hollywood actress, 95.

One month after the devastation, the public and California’s government are being forced to confront weaknesses in their approach to wildfires, which are growing ever more intense and frequent, thanks to increasing drought and heat brought on by climate change. And there may be lessons in the stories of those who died, spotlighting vulnerabilities that kept so many from reaching safety despite early warnings that conditions were ripe for a disaster.

“Are we OK with these events happening, or are we going to spend the resources we need to build effective systems to put out warnings and assist people?” said Gerald Singleton, a lawyer who specializes in wildfire cases and is representing some of the victims of the January fires. “Are we going to make sure that they are able to evacuate in a timely manner, or are we going to say, ‘This is not a service government provides. You are on your own?’”

The deadly fire in Eaton Canyon was first reported at about 6:18 p.m. on Jan. 7. A half hour later, the first emergency alerts went out to residents in the eastern half of Altadena, closest to the flames. Evacuation orders came at 7:26 p.m.

But in the western part of town, where Anthony and Justin Mitchell lived, no one got an alert until 3:25 a.m., when evacuation orders finally sounded.

Anthony Mitchell had already called paramedics for assistance the night before in order to get a ride to his sister’s house away from the possible danger, his sister Cassandra Mitchell said. But she said no one ever showed up. By the time Mitchell dialed 911 in the early hours of Jan. 8, it would be too late.

Cassandra Mitchell said they spoke at around 6 a.m. and Anthony seemed certain someone was coming for them.

“I went to sleep and then he called me that morning and he said, 'Sis, they’re going to come bring me to your house. Give me your address, and they’re coming,’” she said. “He didn’t sound nervous or anything like that. He didn’t sound like he was distressed."

But the fire was moving too fast. By the time he was on the phone with McDaniels, not long after his call with Cassandra Mitchell, it was at his home.

McDaniels said she almost didn’t make it out; the smoke was so thick she could barely see an inch in front of her. As she drove away from her brother-in-law’s home, she said she felt helpless.

“You can’t do anything and you know there’s people in there," she said. "I just have to assume the smoke got to them, because I didn’t hear any screaming, I didn’t hear anyone in pain.”

People with disabilities are at higher risk of death during disasters, and their lives often depend on getting warnings and evacuating early. The margin for error is particularly small in wildfires, which are fast and unpredictable. That is why advocates recommend that disabled people plan ahead — and urge authorities to consider their needs when developing emergency response programs.

A 2019 state auditor report said California was not doing enough to protect older adults and people with disabilities during disasters. Benjamin Kahn, a coordinator for the Disability Community Resource Center, said Los Angeles-area agencies have tried to include more disabled people in the emergency planning process and helped them get the information and training they need. But advocates say disabled people are still overlooked.

“Evacuation advisories may have gone out, but when a disaster hits, many people don’t have the systemic support to get out of their house, get into a car, drive 50 miles away and stay at a hotel for a couple days — if they have a home to return to,” said German Parodi, co-executive director of the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies.

Anthony Mitchell’s daughter, Hajime White, who lives in Warren, Arkansas, said she could not come to terms with the fact that her father and brother died waiting for help.

“Y’all left them to fend for themselves, didn’t have the courtesy to come and rescue them,” White said. “You failed my dad. You failed my brother. You failed them. They were handicapped.”

Erliene Kelley was 83, a retired pharmacy technician. She was active and got around without much trouble, volunteering and meeting friends. She could have fled her Altadena home if she felt she needed to, her family said. But she declined relatives’ offers to evacuate on Jan. 7.

“She was like, ‘No, it’s fine,’” said her granddaughter, Briana Navarro, who lived with Kelley and evacuated earlier that evening with her husband and kids. “She said that there was a major fire, maybe 30 something years ago and that her area did get evacuated but none of the houses burned down then.”

Navarro checked in with her grandmother through the night but realized that a couple of her text messages were never delivered. Kelley’s son, Trevor Kelley, said he drove to her house that night and found her sitting with two flashlights. He asked her to come home with him. “Why would I go to your house when I just saw on the news that they had a voluntary evacuation?” he said she told him.

This kind of response is not uncommon in disaster zones where people do not receive warnings early enough — and when those messages do reach them they may not believe that they are truly in danger, experts say.

“Sometimes they just don’t believe that the fire is actually going to reach them because they may have seen lots of fires locally,” said Mona Curry, former emergency manager with the city of Los Angeles.

Trevor Kelley evacuated to a hotel with his wife. He woke at 5:30 a.m. and saw she had texted at 3:30 a.m. that she’d gotten an alert to evacuate. He could not reach her — she lived in a cellphone dead zone — so he and his wife drove in a panic to her house, past burning homes and through oil-colored smoke. He pulled onto her street and everything was gone, including the house.

They raced to evacuation shelters and searched for her. Then Trevor Kelley’s son texted him an X post from an account that shares information drawn from fire department radio traffic. Sent at 4:45 a.m., it read: “House on fire with person trapped.” It was his mother’s address.

Days later, Trevor’s son visited the wreckage of the home, and spoke to a police officer. The officer confirmed that human remains had been found, and the coroner later confirmed that the body was Erliene Kelley’s.

The fires have spawned an array of investigations by local, county, state and federal authorities — not only into the causes and how they were fought, but also into the factors that may have kept victims from making it out alive.

All 17 people who died in the Eaton Fire lived in the western part of Altadena, where the evacuation alerts were not sent until the morning of Jan. 8. Nine of the 17 were between the ages of 71 and 95. At least three, including the Mitchells, were younger but disabled.

Los Angeles County supervisors have called for an independent review of emergency notification systems that were responsible for alerts issued to residents of Altadena.

Anthony Marrone, the county’s fire chief, told county leaders that there should be an “educational campaign” that emphasizes the need to follow evacuation orders. He also said the county needed a database “to track people who have mobility challenges or health challenges” so they can be taken to safety in the early stages of an impending disaster.

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Marrone has said his firefighters risked their lives to evacuate people and save homes, but faced an impossible task of fighting multiple large fires in worst-case-scenario conditions.

“L.A. County and all 29 fire departments in our county are not prepared for this type of widespread disaster,” Marrone said at a news conference.

There were other problems with the county’s alert system. Evacuation warnings were accidentally sent to nearly 10 million homes, lawmakers said. Some residents got the wrong warnings. Others got the same warnings multiple times, or unnecessary alerts. U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., and 13 other representatives from the area sent letters demanding answers from the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the software company responsible for the alerts.

Clear, well-timed emergency alerts mean the difference between life and death, they wrote. But “unclear messages sent to the wrong locations, multiple times and after the emergency has passed, can lead to alerting fatigue and erosion of public trust,” they wrote.

In Pacific Palisades, where the fire was first reported on a ridgeline at 10:30 a.m., some residents saw it coming and fled immediately. Others waited, and by the time the first evacuation orders went out a little after noon, the few roads leading out of the burning neighborhood were jammed with traffic.

Like many in Los Angeles County, Randy Miod had seen countless wildfires, including some that got close to his Malibu home but did no damage. The last had been in December, when a fire knocked his power out. When the Palisades fire started, his mother pleaded with him early on to leave.

Miod, 55, a popular local surfer, refused.

“I’ve got a hose,” he told her.

He told her he loved her, and that was the last time they spoke, said his mother, Carol Smith.

“He’d been through so many of these fires before and had come through pretty unscathed by all of them,” she said. “And I think that he thought that this was going to be another one that he could skate through.”

Miod’s home, which he’d bought 20 years ago, was precious to him, said Smith, who lived about two hours away, in Banning, California. Known as the “crab shack,” the century-old house on the Pacific Coast Highway doubled as an informal community center for local surfers who crashed there.

On Jan. 8, a cousin called authorities and asked for someone to check on Miod, Smith said. They found remains outside that she presumes are his. The identification is pending a DNA analysis, Smith said.

“He was just such a delight to so many people, young and old. And, gosh, if you’re gonna leave a legacy, I can’t think of a better one, right?” Smith said.

Like Miod, Victor Shaw stayed behind and tried to save his house, according to his family. He had grown up in the Altadena home and inherited it from his parents, who had originally purchased it about a half-century ago, his cousin Darlene Miller said.

Shaw, 66, was funny and caring and loving, and his refusal to leave reflected his pride in his home, Miller said. “It was the family legacy,” she said.

His body was later found at the house with a hose in his hand, Miller said.

His death has left a massive void, and a lot of questions.

Why had there not been earlier evacuation orders? Why hadn’t firefighters been on scene to help douse the flames — or at least persuade him to leave?

“If things were different,” Miller said, “I think he’d still be here.”