The county’s main website had no reference to the fire until Monday, Navid said.
And many residents complained that weekend television coverage of evacuations was also lacking — leaving residents with few avenues for information.
“We were supposed to be getting consistent updates on what was going on,” said Crescenta Valley Town Council President Steve Pierce. “That just wasn’t happening.”
The report will also examine a mistaken mandatory evacuation phone call sent by the county’s new mass emergency notification system to the majority of La Crescenta residents Monday in the early morning hours.
Pierce said the erroneous evacuation order created confusion among residents, who thought the fire didn’t look worse than it had earlier in the night. Many residents decided to stay, but a lot did heed the mistaken phone call, he said.
“A lot of people did evacuate and ended up going down to the high school,” he said.
“And I believe at that point people didn’t know what to do; there was no direction.”
The report, which will be overseen by the county’s chief executive, is due at the Sept. 15 county Board of Supervisors meeting. It will address the effectiveness of the emergency notification system, while evaluating procedures for real-time posting of information on natural disasters and other emergencies.
Antonovich has pointed to nearby cities also affected by the fire, such as Glendale and La Cañada Flintridge, as providing much more consistent updates to residents.
