The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
And then quickly it turned into, who is going to be the first to say that they're evacuating?
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
On text chains, on Instagram, on Facebook, WhatsApp groups, people were all kind of saying, hey, we live around here.
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
We're thinking of evacuating.
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
Has anybody else thought about that?
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
And then other people would be like, oh, we live even further from the foothills.
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
We're already evacuated.
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
In an emergency, L.A.
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
County is responsible for sending out evacuation orders via cell phone in Altadena.
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
Almost immediately after the Eaton fire started in the nearby foothills, an evacuation order went out to parts of Altadena.
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
But in West Altadena, those evacuation orders didn't go out until seven hours after the fire started.
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
And for reasons we still don't know, Mike says he and his neighbors never got the warnings.
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
Somehow Eastern Altadena did in certain parts and Pasadena was put on alert for like, I think it's get ready, set and go.
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
It's like green, yellow, red.
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
And they were very clear in some of the instructions, don't try to evacuate before your neighborhood needs to be evacuated because then you might be clogging the streets for other people who do need to evacuate.
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
Luckily, everyone on our block had evacuated and everyone was safe.
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
But no one had actually received any of the emergency alerts before it happened.
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
Mike's neighbor, Jamie, was staying at Mike's house to look after his dog, Una.
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
Mike and his wife encouraged Jamie to leave in the early evening of January 7th.
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
He's a longtime Altadenian.
The Daily
'The Wirecutter Show': The True Cost of Recovering from the L.A. Wildfires, Part 1
He's a lovely old hippie gentleman who told us, he said, you guys are New Yorkers.