After years of deadly failures to alert residents about approaching wildfires, Los Angeles County officials have shifted sharply from silence to issuing warnings at every turn.
As the Bryson Fire ripped through the Malibu hills Thursday, emergency notifications lit up cellphones, evacuation warnings sent residents rushing to safety and traffic backed up along narrow canyon roads.
Some wildfire survivors praised the forceful response. Others questioned whether officials had moved from providing too little information to issuing too much.
The fire began at about 4:41 p.m. Thursday near Encinal Canyon Road on Malibu’s western edge. By Friday, the blaze had burned 146 acres as more than 414 emergency personnel worked to contain it. Containment stood at only 17%.
Mandatory evacuation orders covered two zones, while residents in 12 additional areas were under evacuation warnings.
The barrage of notifications represented a striking change from earlier wildfire disasters, when residents were often left searching for information as flames advanced toward their homes.
In 2018, the Woolsey Fire swept through the same mountain region, destroying more than 1,600 structures and killing three people.
Some residents first learned of the threat through frantic phone calls from neighbors. Others did not understand the danger until smoke became visible or filled the air.
A subsequent county review revealed major shortcomings in the emergency response. Officials, it found, lacked a clear and coordinated evacuation plan and failed to activate every warning system available to them.
Seven years later, when the Palisades and Eaton fires broke out in January 2025, another review concluded that emergency alerts had once again been delayed and confusing.
That same week, the county’s warning system made a dramatic error: An evacuation warning meant for Calabasas and Agoura Hills was mistakenly sent to nearly 10 million phones across the county.
Now, as another wildfire threatens the region, officials appear determined to avoid being caught unprepared. Yet the torrent of alerts has created a new dilemma: when does necessary warning become too much?
For Meg Gallagher, who nearly lost her home during the Woolsey Fire, the contrast is unmistakable.
When flames pushed toward her property in Cornell, a rural community in the hills above Malibu, no one called her. No one came to her door.
Her first warning came from her son’s school, which called to say it was closing because of smoke. By 7 a.m., she was hurriedly packing her car when firefighters driving along Mulholland Highway noticed she was still there.
“They were shocked that I was still here,” Gallagher told The Post.
The fire partially destroyed her home and damaged several properties nearby.
“An F for the Woolsey Fire, and I think a lot of people in this area would feel the same way,” she told The Post.
This week, however, Gallagher gave county officials a far better assessment.
“I would give them a B+ this time around, because ample notice, days in advance, notice of that day, so people really had time to prepare,” she said.
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Gallagher used the extra time to charge her generator, replace flashlight batteries and prop open her electric gate in case the power went out.
With four dogs and chickens to evacuate, every extra hour mattered.
But not everyone believes the county has found the right balance.
Gina Marcione, owner of The Blue Table restaurant in Agoura Hills, lost her home at Malibou Lake during the Woolsey Fire.
Back then, she relied on frantic calls from neighbors, text chains and social media posts to figure out what was happening.
“There was no text or warnings,” Marcione told The Post. “There was really no PulsePoint back then or like a fire alert app that we all have now.”
She fled around 2 a.m. and spent the night at her restaurant, alongside birds and chickens her neighbors had rescued from the flames.
Today, she can track nearby fires on her phone, a technological leap she welcomes.
“I’m happy that we do have the PulsePoint and all these other apps,” she said.
But Marcione worries that repeated alerts could send too many residents fleeing at once, overwhelming narrow canyon roads already squeezed by construction.
“They need to get their communication a little bit better aligned,” she said.
Images posted on social media Thursday night showed bumper-to-bumper traffic out of the canyons as residents headed toward safety.
Yet just miles away, other residents weren’t going anywhere.
When The Post knocked on doors near the fire, a woman living directly across from the blaze shrugged off the danger, despite the warnings.
“We’re used to it,” she told The Post.
At Agoura High School, the county’s designated evacuation center, not a single evacuee was present when The Post stopped by.
Workers reported that some residents had come and gone, apparently waiting to see whether conditions would get worse.
That wait-and-see attitude was exactly what emergency officials warned against Friday.
“If someone comes to your home and says there’s an evacuation order, that means you need to leave now because there is an immediate threat to your life,” LA County Sheriff Robert Luna said at a morning news conference.
LA County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone warned that Santa Ana winds, low humidity and bone-dry brush would keep fire danger elevated through Saturday night.