Anger was mistakenly sent to millions of people in LA after the fire evacuation alert

Residents were outraged as more fires broke out in the Los Angeles region, traumatizing millions, with no end in sight after four days.

Then on Thursday afternoon came another jolt in the form of a text alert.

This was mistakenly sent to all mobile phones in the region – home to around 10 million people – warning that the fire was near and that they should prepare to evacuate.

Rebecca Alvarez-Petit was on a video work call when her phone started ringing.

“An EVACUATION WARNING has been issued for your area,” the text message read.

The sound echoed around him as each of his colleagues received the same startling message.

“It was like an absolute horror that I was seeing in real time,” he said.

He and his colleagues began to investigate and try to see if they were in immediate danger.

Immediate relief came in the form of a targeted alert telling him to ignore the warning, but this soon gave way to fresh anger, he said.

“We’re all on our needles and we’ve been worried sitting next to our phones, watching TV, turning on the radio, trying to be as informed as possible, because a good system wasn’t in place,” said Alvarez. -Petit, who lives in West Los Angeles.

“And then this. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The death toll from the fires has continued to rise, with at least 10 people killed and likely to rise.

For many, anxiety about saving lives and property has turned into a sense of frustration in managing fires.

Officials have acknowledged a number of complaints, ranging from drying hydrants that hampered firefighting efforts to questions about preparedness and investment in fire mitigation.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass returned to the city from a previously planned trip to Africa to find it on fire. He asked heated questions Thursday about the county’s preparedness, its leadership in this crisis and the water problems that failed firefighters.

“Did that frustrate me? Of course,” Mayor Bass said in response to a question about water issues and whether the area was sufficiently prepared. He stated that it is an “unprecedented event”.

Like other officials, he stressed that the fires were able to spread on Tuesday because of strong winds, the same winds that prevented planes from dropping water or fire retardant on the fire. He said city water systems and neighborhood fire hydrants have not been built to put out thousands of acres of fires.

He stated that there will be reviews of how the incident happened, which will examine how the officials and agencies handled it.

“When lives have been saved and homes have been saved, we will do a full assessment of what worked, what didn’t work, and any body, department, individual to correct or hold accountable,” he said.

“Right now my focus is on lives and homes.”

The evolving disaster has become the need to understand why this happened and became the most devastating fire in Los Angeles history.

When one of five wildfires raging in Los Angeles County approached Larry Villescas’ home Tuesday, he grabbed the only tool he could: a garden hose.

He and his neighbors made quick work of the embers that fell into their homes from the Eaton Fire and ignited the grass.

The sleeve was then dried.

He saw the house of the residents of Altadena burning. Then there was a boom: a nearby house was on fire and looked as if it had exploded. He had to leave.

As he drove away, he saw the fire engulfing his garage.

“If we had water pressure, we would be able to deal with it,” said Mr. Villescas, standing in front of the massive remains of his home.

He remembered seeing the firefighters that night – when the community burned – sitting in their trucks, unable to help.

“I remember my rage. It was like, ‘Do something,’ but they can’t — there’s no water pressure,” she said. “It’s just infuriating. How could this happen?”

Some experts say the water shortage is due to unprecedented demand rather than poor management.

“The problem is that the scope of the disaster is so wide that there are thousands of firefighters and hundreds of firefighters drawing water,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the California Water Resources Institute, told the BBC.

“After all, only so much water can flow through the pipes at one time.”

Other residents believed that the situation was not prepared despite seeing the devastating fire situation.

Hipolito Cisneros, surveying the remains of his now-destroyed house, said that public services in the area have needed renovations for years.

“We’ve lived here 26 years and we’ve never seen it tested,” she says of the fire hydrant at the end of her block that failed to pump water when it was most needed.

On the street, Fernando Gonzalez helped his brother sift through the debris of his 15-year-old home.

He said his home in Santa Clarita – about 45 minutes away in Los Angeles County – was also under threat from other fires.

“We have been on high alert,” he said. – It’s around us, you know.