News
All 17 deaths in Eaton Fire were in a zone where evacuation orders took hours to arrive
Within a half-hour of a fire igniting on an Eaton Canyon hillside in the afternoon of Jan. 7, thousands of residents’ phones buzzed in eastern Altadena with a warning from Los Angeles County: “BE AWARE.” Within 40 minutes, a dire alert: “LEAVE NOW.”
But neighborhoods in western Altadena did not see the same urgency, as evacuation orders didn’t arrive until early the following morning — more than nine hours after the Eaton Fire began.
By then, it was too late.
All 17 people who died in the wind-fueled fire were west of Lake Avenue, a major corridor that runs north-south through Altadena. They included an 83-year-old retired Lockheed Martin project manager, a 95-year-old who was an actress in old Black Hollywood, and a 67-year-old amputee who used a wheelchair and died with his adult son, who had cerebral palsy.
Fifteen of the deaths occurred in an area where the first evacuation order wasn’t sent until 3:25 a.m. on Jan. 8; the other two occurred in an area where the order came at 5:42 a.m., according to a review of the alerts as well as data compiled by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office.
The discrepancy between west and east Altadena is spurring questions among local officials and residents about the timing of the emergency alerts and whether earlier warnings might have saved lives.
“There was not a lot of time to do anything, but our notification system should have been going off long before they were,” Altadena Town Councilmember Connor Cipolla told NBC News on Wednesday. “It’s obvious by the destruction. It failed half our town.”
On Tuesday, two Los Angeles County supervisors introduced a motion calling for an independent review of the emergency notification systems.
While the county evaluates its response following any disaster, Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger said Wednesday that she wants to accelerate an analysis for the wildfires that have killed more than two dozen people and destroyed over 15,000 structures across the region.
“I know that on the west side, the older part of Altadena, it’s far more concentrated, a lot of homes,” Barger told NBC Los Angeles. “We need to find out what happened, but I do know the fire was traveling fast.”
She cautioned that additional notifications may not have saved lives, but said “the victims of this disaster deserve our transparency and accountability.”
Her motion, which will be voted on at the county supervisors’ meeting next Tuesday, followed a Los Angeles Times report on the delayed evacuation notices in the Eaton Fire.
In a statement, the county’s Coordinated Joint Information Center said it could not immediately comment on the factors that may have led to the deaths in the fires, and that a comprehensive review will “take months because it will require combing through and validating the call histories of the fire, interviewing first responders on the scene, interviewing incident commanders, and searching and reviewing our 911 records, among other essential steps, including obtaining feedback from all relevant sources. That work may also require a third-party entity to ensure integrity of the investigation.”
Electronic alerts are one method for warning residents, but the county added that it also uses door knocks, patrols with loudspeakers driving through neighborhoods and media coordination.
Jill Fogel said none of that happened in her part of west Altadena.
She was hunkered down with her two young children and their father on Olive Avenue on Jan. 8 when she got a text after 3 a.m. from a nearby friend north of Altadena saying there were flames in her backyard. Fogel, 43, said she checked the Watch Duty app, which offers real-time updates taken from first responders radio broadcasts, but there were no warnings that her neighborhood might have to evacuate.
Then she looked outside her rental home and saw flames. A few minutes later, she got an alert ordering an evacuation, she said. She told her landlord and then her family scrambled into a car and left. As they made their way out of the neighborhood, joining a stream of cars, Fogel said she saw no firefighting vehicles or police cars and heard no sirens.
Fogel said she realized that the fire was moving very fast in the hours before the evacuation order. But she thinks authorities should have sent alerts much earlier.
“I thought it was strange that the flames were so close and we hadn’t gotten a warning,” Fogel said. “I thought they would have let us know a lot sooner.”
More than two weeks after it began, the Eaton Fire is 91% contained, fire officials said Wednesday. The cause remains under investigation.
Investigators have focused on a high-voltage electrical tower in Eaton Canyon as the potential origin, as fierce Santa Ana winds approaching 100 mph drove the flames into Altadena and Pasadena.
The fire started at about 6:18 p.m. on Jan. 7. The first emergency alert was sent to Altadena residents east of Lake Avenue at about 6:48 p.m., according to the PBS Warning, Alert and Response Network, which tracks public alert system messages. A more urgent message to evacuate was sent to residents in parts of eastern Altadena closer to the fire at 7:26 p.m.
The Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management described the scenario at the time as a “fast moving wildfire in your area.”
Joe Ten Eyck, a former chief at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said it can be difficult to get the timing of fire evacuation alerts right: Issue them too soon, and you risk mass panic, jammed roadways and more danger, but issue them too late, and you risk people getting stuck in burning neighborhoods.
Those decisions often must be made in an instant, Ten Eyck said, based on rapidly evolving conditions.
Ten Eyck, who has visited the scenes of devastation wrought by the Eaton and Palisades fires, also cautioned against rushing to judgment in Los Angeles without knowing why some areas did not get evacuation orders earlier.
“I can certainly understand why everybody is upset,” said Ten Eyck, who now runs wildfire training programs for the International Association of Fire Fighters. “But there are a lot of factors involved in this.”
Those can include flames that were advancing extraordinarily fast under hurricane-force winds, limited nighttime visibility and damaged communications equipment, Ten Eyck said. He noted that authorities typically issue evacuations in areas closest to the front of a fire, but they may not immediately recognize when wind-driven embers are sparking catastrophic new fires.
Salomón Huerta, an Altadena artist, was at his studio while his wife, Ana, was at their home on the west side when the Eaton Fire erupted. She never got any alerts, he said, but by the time he returned home, he could see the fires in the distance, and the couple decided to evacuate around 9 p.m.
“It was bad already,” Huerta, 59, said.
He later learned a neighbor was killed. Dalyce Curry, 95, was dropped off at her home around midnight by her granddaughter who thought she would be safe. Her granddaughter, Dalyce Kelley, previously told NBC News that it was possible her grandmother didn’t receive emergency alerts and was unaware of the middle-of-the-night evacuation order.
“Elderly people, they just don’t get into cellphones,” Kelley said. “Not her.”
Many of the victims of the Eaton Fire were elderly and likely unable to evacuate quickly, Cipolla, the town councilmember, added.
“In everyone’s defense, it was a rapidly moving fire and a very fluid situation,” he said. “But when you take into account 17 people lost their lives, a lot of them disabled and elderly, it feels like something failed.”
new video loaded: What Trump Told Us About the ICE Shooting
By Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Alexandra Ostasiewicz, Nikolay Nikolov and Coleman Lowndes
January 8, 2026
Good morning. You’re reading the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the Up First podcast for all the news you need to start your day.
Today’s top stories
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a Minneapolis woman, yesterday. Multiple observers captured the shooting on video, and community members demanded accountability. Minnesota law enforcement officials and the FBI are investigating the fatal shooting, which the Trump administration says was an act of self-defense. Meanwhile, the mayor has accused the officer of reckless use of power and demanded that ICE get out of Minneapolis.
People demonstrate during a vigil at the site where a woman was shot and killed by an immigration officer earlier in the day in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Jan. 7, 2026. An immigration officer in Minneapolis shot dead a woman on Wednesday, triggering outrage from local leaders even as President Trump claimed the officer acted in self-defense. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey deemed the government’s allegation that the woman was attacking federal agents “bullshit,” and called on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers conducting a second day of mass raids to leave Minneapolis.
Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images
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Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images
- 🎧 Caitlin Callenson recorded the shooting and says officers gave Good multiple conflicting instructions while she was in her vehicle. Callenson says Good was already unresponsive when officers pulled her from the car. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claims the officer was struck by the vehicle and acted in self-defense. In the video NPR reviewed, the officer doesn’t seem to be hit and was seen walking after he fired the shots, NPR’s Meg Anderson tells Up First. Anderson says it has been mostly peaceful in Minneapolis, but there is a lot of anger and tension because protesters want ICE out of the city.
U.S. forces yesterday seized a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the north Atlantic between Iceland and Britain after a two-week chase. The tanker was originally headed to Venezuela, but it changed course to avoid the U.S. ships. This action comes as the Trump administration begins releasing new information about its plans for Venezuela’s oil industry.
- 🎧 It has been a dramatic week for U.S. operations in Venezuela, NPR’s Greg Myre says, prompting critics to ask if a real plan for the road ahead exists. Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded that the U.S. does have a strategy to stabilize Venezuela, and much of it seems to involve oil. Rubio said the U.S. would take control of up to 50 million barrels of oil from the country. Myre says the Trump administration appears to have a multipronged strategy that involves taking over the country’s oil, selling it on the world market and pressuring U.S. oil companies to enter Venezuela.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. released new dietary guidelines for Americans yesterday that focus on promoting whole foods, proteins and healthy fats. The guidance, which he says aims to “revolutionize our food culture,” comes with a new food pyramid, which replaces the current MyPlate symbol.
- 🎧 “I’m very disappointed in the new pyramid,” Christopher Gardner, a nutrition expert who was on the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, tells NPR’s Allison Aubrey. Gardner says the new food structure, which features red meat and saturated fats at the top, contradicts decades of evidence and research. Poor eating habits and the standard American diet are widely considered to cause chronic disease. Aubrey says the new guidelines alone won’t change people’s eating habits, but they will be highly influential. This guidance will shape the offerings in school meals and on military bases, and determine what’s allowed in federal nutrition programs.
Special series
Trump has tried to bury the truth of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021. NPR built a visual archive of the attack on the Capitol, showing exactly what happened through the lenses of the people who were there. “Chapter 4: The investigation” shows how federal investigators found the rioters and built the largest criminal case in U.S. history.
Political leaders, including Trump, called for rioters to face justice for their actions on Jan. 6. This request came because so few people were arrested during the attack. The extremists who led the riot remained free, and some threatened further violence. The government launched the largest federal investigation in American history, resulting in the arrest of over 1,500 individuals from all 50 states. The most serious cases were made by prosecutors against leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. For their roles in planning the attack against the U.S., some extremists were found guilty of seditious conspiracy. Take a look at the Jan. 6 prosecutions by the numbers, including the highest sentence received.
To learn more, explore NPR’s database of federal criminal cases from Jan. 6. You can also see more of NPR’s reporting on the topic.
Deep dive
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
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Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Trump takes 325 milligrams of daily aspirin, which is four times the recommended 81 milligrams of low-dose aspirin used for cardiovascular disease prevention. The president revealed this detail in an interview with The Wall Street Journal published last week. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends that anyone over 60 not start a daily dose of aspirin to prevent cardiovascular disease if they don’t already have an underlying problem. The group said it’s reasonable to stop preventive aspirin in people already taking it around age 75 years. Trump is 79. This is what you should know about aspirin and cardiac health:
- 💊 Doctors often prescribe the low dose of aspirin because there’s no benefit to taking a higher dose, according to a large study published in 2021.
- 💊 Some people, including adults who have undergone heart bypass surgery and those who have had a heart attack, should take the advised dose of the drug for their entire life.
- 💊 While safer than other blood thinners, the drug — even at low doses — raises the risk of bleeding in the stomach and brain. But these adverse events are unlikely to cause death.
3 things to know before you go
When an ant pupa has a deadly, incurable infection, it sends out a signal that tells worker ants to unpack it from its cocoon and disinfect it, a process that results in its death.
Christopher D. Pull/ISTA
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Christopher D. Pull/ISTA
- Young, terminally ill ants will send out an altruistic “kill me” signal to worker ants, according to a study in the journal Nature Communications. With this strategy, the sick ants sacrifice themselves for the good of their colony.
- In this week’s Far-Flung Postcards series, you can spot a real, lone California sequoia tree in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont in Paris. Napoleon III transformed the park from a former landfill into one of the French capital’s greenest escapes.
- The ACLU and several authors have sued Utah over its “sensitive materials” book law, which has now banned 22 books in K-12 schools. Among the books on the ban list are The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. (via KUER)
This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.
new video loaded: Minnesota Governor Condemns ICE Shooting
transcript
transcript
Minnesota Governor Condemns ICE Shooting
Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota slammed the fatal shooting of a woman by an immigration agent. President Trump said that the agents had acted in self-defense.
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This morning, we learned that an ICE officer shot and killed someone in Minneapolis. We have been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety, that someone was going to get hurt. Just yesterday, I said exactly that. What we’re seeing is the consequences of governance designed to generate fear, headlines and conflict. It’s governing by reality TV. And today, that recklessness cost someone their life.
By Jiawei Wang
January 8, 2026
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Video: Minnesota Governor Condemns ICE Shooting
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