California Investigates Why Most of the Eaton Fire Victims Were Black

California’s attorney general announced on Thursday he would open a rare civil rights investigation into Los Angeles County’s emergency response to the Eaton fire, which killed 19 people last year and decimated West Altadena, a historically Black middle-class neighborhood.

The Eaton fire began on Jan. 7, 2025, in Altadena, hours after the Palisades fire tore through the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles some 35 miles to the west. Together, the two blazes, whipped out of control by winds that reached hurricane speeds, killed 31 people and destroyed more than 16,000 buildings.

There have been lawsuits and reviews examining government failures during the disaster. But the attorney general, Rob Bonta, said he felt a duty to open what he believed to be the first such civil rights investigation into a government’s wildfire response.

“The investigation we’ve launched is driven by one overarching question,” Mr. Bonta said during a news conference. “Did the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s delay in notifying and evacuating the historically Black West Altadena community violate state anti-discrimination and disability laws?”



https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/us/los-angeles-eaton-fire-california-investigation.html