While the agents registered a senior house of West Altadena on the morning of January 8, Eaton's fire was enraged around.
The evacuation orders for the area had been issued hours before, and the installation seemed evacuated, but the team wanted to be sure because they had already found an old woman who tried to leave the installation to walk her dog, oblivious to the incursion.
“Every window we look at, we think: 'The fire is coming,” said the deputy of the Los Angeles County Sheriff, Quinn Alkonis. “We could see flames everywhere. It was afraid, but we knew we had a job to do and make sure that no one was left behind. “
After making sure that the dog walker was safe, Alkonis and other deputies toured the care of the elderly of Montecedro with flashlights, playing doors, shouting corridors. When they reached the third floor, they heard a weak voice.
“Do not miss me,” said a woman who wore a walker to the deputies. The 100 -year -old told them that she was lost and that her headphones were not accused, according to a video of the cameras used by the officers' body.
“Obviously he was striving to get out of the building,” Alkonis said, remembering how the woman had no breathing and her nose running. We were “simply surprised that she was there, but we felt relieved to have found her.”
With the support on the road, Alkonis and his fellow deputy Nicholas Martínez took both women to a safe place and verified that no one else was inside.
“If we weren't there, who knows what would have happened to him?” Alkonis said Wednesday morning, since he recalled the situation at the beginning of this month.
The chaotic rescue in the senior community further underlines the generalized problems and concerns about evacuations on the western side of Altadena, where license orders occurred almost 10 hours after those issued for residents who live east of North Lake Avenue, according to an investigation of the Times.
At least 17 people died in the fire; All were found west of Lake Avenue. The west of Altadena never received evacuation warnings that night, and the evacuation orders did not reach up to 3:30 am or later, long after the flames threatened the area.
County officials have requested an external review of evacuation alerts and why West Altadena arrived so late.
The Montecedro installation is just west of North Lake Avenue, in an evacuation zone that received the order at 5:42 AM of January 8, the latest notices of the area to leave, according to the records of the archived alerts.
But the officials of the Episcopal Communities and Services, the non -profit organization that directs the installation of Montecedro, said that even before that order fell, their team began to evacuate the residents just after the 4 am, together with The Fire Department of the County of the Sheriff and the department. Around 6 am, the area's radio traffic required more help to evacuate a “four -story convalescent house” in the direction of the Montecedro community.
The non -profit organization said it used eight municipal buses and two facilities buses to transfer residents and staff to the Pasadena Convention Center, arriving shortly after 7 am, according to a statement.
“The fire personnel and the members of the Montecedro team made two complete tours through the building, which included activating the fire alarm and inspecting each residence,” said the statement. “However, there were no two independent living residents and did not reach buses.”
Deputies Nicholas Martínez, on the left, and Quinn Alkonis talk about their experience rescuing older adults from the Montecedro retirement community during the Eaton fire.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
ECS staff realized that the two residents, the woman who tried According to the statement. They said it is not clear why the two women “were not found in the first or second sweeps of the building.”
“Move almost 200 people successfully, some with cognitive problems or other impediments, far from their homes in a couple of hours, it is a cause,” said ECS executive, James Rothrock, in a statement. “That said, we have discovered gaps in our planning and execution that we are working to understand and correct. Like hundreds of agencies and institutions in the Los Angeles area, we face an unprecedented challenge, and our response to it deserves a deep and not varnishing review. ”
Jason Montiel, a spokesman for the State Social Services Department, who authorized Montecedro more recently in 2023, said the agency is conducting an investigation into what happened in the installation, but declined to make more comments.
Alkonis and Martínez said that they were sent to that place around 9 am, approximately three hours after the evacuation orders were issued, to verify the area and they were not given information about any previous effort to clear the installation.
“We understood at the same time that it was such a chaotic situation, who knows what happened before arriving there, but we are happy to be there,” said Alkonis. “Our job is to go there and make sure they leave.”
All the deputies who talked to the Times on Wednesday refused to comment on the evacuation process before arriving or after they left. Martínez and Alkonis, who generally have their base in Carson, said that during their search they did not find other personnel or residents.
Lasd officials did not immediately answer questions about any additional investigation that can be launched on how the two women were left behind.
While the Superior Care Center survived the fire, he experienced some minor damages in the fire, according to county damage assessments. But around them, several houses have been destroyed.
“It could have been very bad,” Martínez said. “There was a moment of fear when seeing that every corner was on fire, but at the bottom of my mind, … we had to make sure everyone came out.”
