Mary McNamara: LA officials' poor fire communication should have residents fuming

I should have known better than to turn on the television.

For the second time in 15 years, my family and I had fled our foothills home. During 2009's Station fire, we were given evacuation notice only when clouds of smoke filled the streets and flames were clearly visible on nearby mountainsides.

This time we left as soon as our phones buzzed with an evacuation warning alert. We had seen the horrifying speed with which fire had roared through the Palisades and, knowing that fire had broken out near Eaton Canyon in Altadena, endured a night in which our house shuddered under 85-mile-an-hour winds. By morning, the power had been out for hours, we had little to no cell service and coverage on the radio, though fixated on the Palisades and then Malibu, also mentioned increased devastation in Altadena.

Outside the sky bulged with clouds so dark they looked like a CG rendition of hell and the mandatory evacuation area was only three blocks away. The moment the wind died down enough for us to actually pack the car, we left.

Driving south on the 2, I glanced over to see what took me three seconds to recognize as the sun, now an orb that appeared to belong to a different planet.

Once we reached our destination I began what would turn into a 24-hour obsession with fire maps — on The Times website, the Watch Duty app, protect.genasys.com. None of which told me what I wanted to know: How fast was the fire moving toward my home and those of my friends and neighbors?

It was difficult to tell. My colleagues have done heroic work detailing the devastation in Altadena, with photos and reports of fire racing down the hills, destroying homes and businesses with the same ferocity it had in the Palisades. I answered texts from friends and family with optimism, while bouncing from all the maps to social media and Next Door, hoping to get some notion of the actual fire line to the west of the main blaze only to find conflicting reports.

Knowing from experience that the foothills remain something of a mystery to those who do not live there — it took days before the Station fire made the top half of the news — I monitored the well-being of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. If that burned, cameras would be present. My colleague Jessica Gelt reported that the Gamble House and Descanso Gardens appeared to be in no danger, which, being only a few miles from my home, was a huge relief.

But as evening approached and my fingers began to spasm from working my phone, I relented and turned on the television.

It was a huge mistake.

The first thing I watched was a local fire chief providing a grim tour of the devastation in the Palisades. I assume the camera crew had required official accompaniment to film, but all I could think was that here was a firefighter giving an aftermath interview while thousands of acres and homes continued to burn.

The images were horrific, but they offered no information beyond what had already been provided by many news outlets, including and especially The Times, as well as hundreds of residents posting on social media. The anchors made the appropriate comments of shock and grief while I writhed in my seat wondering where all the various fire lines actually were at that moment.

Coverage was then interrupted by a press conference headed by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, ostensibly to provide updates on the various fires — including, presumably, Eaton. This crisis has not, by any measure, been Bass' finest hour. She left the country despite warnings of upcoming high wind and fire risk conditions and returned to find the city ablaze. She has refused to answer questions and criticism about her departure, the city's apparent lack of preparedness, reports of lag time between the eruption of the Palisades fire and a coordinated response and the clear under-staffing of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

I did not expect her to address any of these things at this press conference — she was in a crisis situation and this was not the time for that. I did, however, expect her to provide updates. You know, to tell us exactly what was going on. Maybe pull out some maps that revealed not just evacuation areas but some sense of actual fire lines. Discuss how much water and fire retardant had been dropped when and where, and whether it was proving effective. Something.

Instead, she blamed the wind. Not in a terribly informative way — no mention of potential shifts or increases and what they might mean for each fire. Just a dramatic reminder of how bad the winds had been (Um, Mayor? We were there) and how fast the Palisades fire moved (ditto). No mention, of course, of the Eaton fire, in which at least four people died.

Then she noted that many more people may be getting evacuation orders — where? We were left to guess — and reminded us to heed them. (Many of us had, which is why we were hoping for that update.) Obviously reading from a prepared script, she exhorted Angelenos to help one another and expressed confidence that we would rebuild.

I'm sure we will, but again, there was the air of aftermath, as if we needed to begin moving on, to pull ourselves from the wreckage. But the wreckage was still occurring, all over the damn place, and while condolences and spine-stiffening are important, at that moment, tens of thousands of people were craving information.

Especially those who do not live in the Palisades, Malibu and other Westside neighborhoods.

I realize Altadena and the foothill communities (except Pasadena) are not high-profile places, or as closely associated with the rich and famous (though the rich and famous do live there too, and many lost their homes in the Eaton fire.) Fox's was just as iconic as the Reel Inn to local residents, as was the Eaton Canyon Nature Center.

Not that this matters. Both neighborhoods are vital centers in the sprawl that is Los Angeles, and both have been gutted with unimaginable speed and ferocity. A beloved community, paradise to its residents, is there — and then, horrifyingly, it is gone.

But the fires are still burning.

There will be time to collectively mourn, condole and rebuild, when they no longer are, when all communities are safe. For now, though, thousands of Angelenos remain evacuated from their homes, with no clear knowledge of how close they are (or aren't) to losing them. The catastrophic winds appear to have died down, giving exhausted firefighters aid from the air, but the anxiety level remains paralyzingly high. (It certainly didn't help the nerves when an emergency evacuation alert was sent in error to scores of L.A. County residents Thursday afternoon, followed by an equally loud correction.)

Our neighborhood remains under evacuation warning, which means we could return home. But even as I have been writing this, a fire has broken out in nearby Big Tujunga and, according to Next Door, the power is still out, the air quality foul. So we are staying put.

Angelenos are resilient, resourceful and quick to unify in times of disaster. But it's difficult to know what to do if we don't know what is actually happening. Journalists can only do so much in times like these, and Times journalists have done plenty. But they can only work with the information they are given.

If Bass and other leaders want to make up for being clearly caught short, they need to offer more, and clearer, information. When you've fled your home, you shouldn't have to rely on Next Door to find out what's actually happening.