U.S. alert systems are broken

OS ANGELES County officials dismissed their recent after-action report on the January wildfires as "inadequate." For me, the McChrystal Report is a precise, comprehensive account of failure, revealing the nation's system for alerting the public as little more than paper, pencil and prayer.

- KELLY R. MCKINNEY GUEST CONTRIBUTOR

At its outset, the report drops you into the beating heart of the catastrophe: a massive scrum of firefighters and agency reps, all shouting against the wind and chaos. It was in the Unified Command Post, at the base of Eaton Canyon, that the L.A. County fire, sheriff and emergency management departments struggled to decide on, communicate and implement their evacuation decisions. Over the span of a single day, they made more than 200 decisions regarding the Palisades and Eaton fires. Each decision meant someone's home, someone's street, someone's life was on the line.

However, the process among the group was primitive. Field commanders made decisions. Someone scribbled them down. Someone else relayed them by phone or text. Finally, staff keyed them into Los Angeles County’s mass-notification system. This chain of communication added at least 30 minutes to every alert — a wait that, in a wind-driven fire moving at freeway speeds, can become a death sentence for many.