January 10, 2025 - California wildfire updates

A new evacuation order was issued in the Palisades Fire, extending to Interstate 405 and the Encino Reservoir, the Los Angeles Fire Department said in an alert.

The expansion of the order borders one of Los Angeles’ busiest freeways as well as the Getty Center, a cultural institution in the city.

After millions of Los Angeles County residents received evacuation alerts by mistake, countless Angelenos received more erroneous warnings while the county tries to improve its alert system.

The errant warnings fueled panic and frustration in the nation’s most populous county, where several wildfires still rage out of control. But authorities say the county’s emergency alerts have also saved countless lives, giving residents time to flee before flames engulf their homes.

While authorities cite unspecified technical flaws for this week’s messaging problems, a larger issue remains.

Some residents get emergency alerts on their phones based on their proximity to cell phone towers in those affected areas – not based on where they live. In other words: If your home is at risk of burning down, but you’re at work on the other side of town, you might not get a cell phone alert saying your home is under an evacuation warning.

The two-day messaging debacle started Thursday, shortly after the Kenneth Fire broke out. Emergency officials tried to send an alert only to people in the Calabasas and Agoura Hills areas, LaSota told CNN.

“The first technical glitch is that it went out county-wide, instead of to the affected area,” he said.

So, residents throughout the county of almost 10 million people received an urgent message on their cell phones.

After the error was discovered “We had to cancel that one,” LaSota said.

But the problems continued Friday when residents were startled by pre-dawn alerts.

No one should have received such warnings before dawn Friday, LaSota said.

“Due to an error in the technology … people are receiving them today, even though they were sent yesterday,” he said.

LaSota and other emergency officials said a detailed investigation is underway to try to determine the cause.

Friday evening, Los Angeles County said it was temporarily moving to the state’s emergency notification system.

Los Angeles County declared a local health emergency Friday after several days of intense fire and wind activity.

The order applies to the entire county “due to the widespread presence of ash and particulate matter in the air throughout the entire region,” officials said.

The health department also issued an order prohibiting the use of power air blowers, including leaf blowers.

Kristin Crowley appears on CNN on Friday, January 10.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had a meeting Friday afternoon with Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, a source familiar with the meeting said.

It comes after Crowley said earlier today that city officials failed her department by slashing its budget by $17 million — a decision that she said is now negatively affecting the agency’s ability to battle the raging wildfires in the county.

Over 100 fire apparatus are out of service, the fire chief said. The budget cuts eliminated civilian positions such as mechanics which has and “will continue to severely impact our ability to repair apparatus,” Crowley told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

“We can no longer sustain where we are. We do not have enough firefighters,” Crowley said.

Both Bass and Crowley were absent this evening from a news conference about the wildfires. The city had said that Bass along with city and county officials would be speaking at the event that was ultimately only addressed by police department officials.

The mayor’s office however did send a brief statement denying a published report that she’d fired Crowley. “This is false,” it said.

The post was updated with the statement from the mayor’s office.

The Kenneth Fire burning across Los Angeles and Ventura counties is now 50% contained, according to a Friday evening update from Cal Fire.

The fire has burned 1,052 acres, the agency reported.

Los Angeles County is temporarily moving to the state’s emergency notification system after a malfunction with the county system accidentally notified almost 10 million people.

The preliminary investigation shows that “an accurate, correctly-targeted alert” was sent around 4:00 p.m. Thursday, but “was erroneously sent out to nearly 10 million residents across the County,” it said.

Genasys, the vendor that operates software for the county’s emergency alert messaging, is part of the review and “has added safeguards to its software,” the county said.

In a statement to CNN, Genasys said they are working with the county to investigate the incident and that their application “continues to be used by emergency personnel to map evacuation zones and inform evacuation decisions.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Communications Commission have also joined the county to help in the investigation, the county said.

This post was updated with comment from Genasys.

Rodney Nickerson lost his life in the Eaton fire.

Eric Nickerson remembers everything about the last phone call he had with his father, Rodney, who he says died this week in the Eaton Fire as it engulfed the Altadena home his father lived in for more than 50 years.

Nickerson last spoke to his father on Tuesday morning before several fires broke out in Los Angeles, he told CNN’s Erin Burnett Friday. The pair were extremely close and spoke every day, he added.

Eric Nickerson speaks with CNN on Friday, January 10.

The day carried on and Nickerson could not reach his father, he said. He couldn’t reach him Wednesday morning either, Nickerson told CNN.

Eventually, family and friends learned of Rodney’s death and had to break the news to his son. “It was the kind of a situation where they didn’t know what to tell me,” Nickerson said. “They didn’t really know what words to tell me because of the situation.”

The working class neighborhood where Rodney lived – where Nickerson grew up – is destroyed, he said – a reality so difficult to understand, it doesn’t feel real.

“It’s devastated,” Nickerson said. “It looks like a movie set.”

Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chair Kathryn Barger said an apparent “glitch” resulted in denials for residents applying online for FEMA reimbursement in the wake of the wildfires.

Barger said people who were denied should reapply.

Earlier on Friday, Barger said she found the denials “mind-boggling” and would investigate the issue.

An 85-year-old woman died in the Palisades Fire after refusing to leave her home and pets, according to Luxe Homecare, the home health company caring for her at the time.

Annette Rossilli was told to evacuate her home after the Palisades Fire erupted Tuesday morning but she refused to leave, according to Fay Vahdani, president of Luxe Homecare. Rossilli lived in the home by herself and received in-home care three days a week, Vahdani said.

At least 11 deaths are associated with the Los Angeles fires, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner said Friday. Five of the deaths appear to be from the Palisades Fire and six deaths in the Eaton Fire, according to the office’s records.

A caregiver offered to pick Rossilli up and neighbors tried to convince her to evacuate, according to Vahdani, but Rossilli wanted to stay with her pets: a dog named Greetly, a canary named Pepper, two parrots and a turtle, Vahdani said.

Firefighters later found Rossilli’s body in her car on Wednesday, according to Vahdani and Rossilli’s family.

Rossilli leaves behind a daughter and son. She ran a plumbing business in Pacific Palisades for many years with her late husband. After he passed away, Rossilli continued to live in the same home. She was a kind, friendly and grateful person who had many friends in the community and will be deeply missed, according to Luxe Homecare.

Vehicles charred by the Eaton Fire sit inside a dealership in Altadena, California, on Friday, January 10.

With winds weakening, the Eaton Fire is not expected to grow significantly and firefighters are making progress against the blaze, fire officials said at a Friday community meeting.

“The big difference today from the past several days is we’ve lost the wind influence,” Fire Behavior Analyst Dennis Burns said.

While the fire, which has burned 13,690 acres in the Altadena area, remains active, crews have been able to use aircraft to attack the blaze and are focusing on the fire’s west side, where the fire initially made the biggest push, Section Chief Ernie Villa said.

Many of the evacuation orders in the Pasadena area have been lifted, according to Pasadena Fire Chief Chad Augustin.

But as firefighters make progress, residents are contending with the losses.