L.A. County Blasts Own $2 Million Report on Fire Evacuation Failures

The Los Angeles County supervisors blasted a $1.9 million report Tuesday on the reasons for the catastrophic failure of a local evacuation system, whose delays likely contributed to 18 deaths during wildfires in January.

As Breitbart News reported in April, the County hired a consulting firm led by Trump-hating former general Stanley McChrystal to handle a process of collecting public input and studying what went wrong in the fire.

Late last month, the report was released. It did not hold any individual or agency responsible for the delayed evacuation alert. As the Los Angeles reported, angry residents blasted the report for failing to arrive at clear conclusions and failing to hold officials accountable. The supervisors, too, joined in.

The Times reported:

“I’ve heard from many residents, some of whom are in the audience, who share that this report leads to more questions than answers, and, quite frankly, a lot of anger,” said Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents unincorporated Altadena, as the board discussed the report’s findings at its Tuesday meeting.

…

The pushback by supervisors is notable because they commissioned the report in January and vowed it would get to the bottom of what went wrong. When it was unveiled last week, top county officials hailed it as a blueprint for improvements. But it almost immediately faced criticism from residents and others.

The state failed to cooperate with the probe, as did some local agencies.

Still, the Pasadena Star-News reported that the supervisors voted to adopt some of the report’s proposals to improve its Office of Emergency Management.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Zionist Conspiracy Wants You, now available on Amazon. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.