Clear Warnings & Complex Realities
What Public Safety Leaders Can Learn from the 2025 Los Angeles Wind-Driven Fires
Introduction
The January 2025 Los Angeles Fires were extraordinary—not only because of the devastating impacts and tragic loss of life but also due to the exceptionally clear, timely, and intense pre-incident warnings issued well before ignition.
Among the fires that burned, the Palisades and Eaton Fires caused the greatest damage and loss. While it’s tempting to view these disasters as isolated events, public safety leaders nationwide should instead use them to proactively stress test and enhance their own capabilities, even if they weren't directly impacted.
A critical lesson from the Los Angeles fires is the importance of proactive measures—actions taken "left of bang," before an incident occurs. As we’ve previously discussed, the wind-driven fires that devastated communities in Los Angeles, Boulder, Lahaina, and Paradise represent a distinct subset of wildfires. These fires have shifted from predictable forest-based incidents to rapid, wind-fueled disasters threatening urban and suburban communities.
Though undeniably devastating, wind-driven fires provide public safety organizations a rare opportunity for proactive preparedness. High wind speeds are consistent pre-event indicators, as significant fires like these require extreme winds to rapidly intensify and spread. While ignition still demands a spark—just as civil unrest needs a catalyst to tip frustration into violence—analyzing actions taken between forecasted threats and actual ignition provides invaluable insights for future readiness.
This article analyzes the pre-incident phase of the 2025 Los Angeles Fires through three lenses:
Timeline of Pre-Fire Alerts and Warnings (Late Dec 2024 – Jan 7, 2025)
The following timeline captures the escalating series of pre-incident alerts, warnings, and communications preceding the destructive Los Angeles Fires of January 2025. It highlights the detailed forecasting and proactive public messaging that set the stage for organizational readiness and response.
Mid-to-Late December 2024
An exceptionally dry fall had set the stage for extreme fire risk in Southern California. By the end of December, Los Angeles County was slipping into moderate drought, an unusual situation for the winter wet season, with meteorologists and local media beginning to note the heightened vulnerability.
For example, the Los Angeles Times shared the threatening conditions on December 13, 2024, and again on December 30, 2024. In hindsight, this dry backdrop foreshadowed the critical conditions leading up to the early January wind event.
In their December 2nd, 2024 Fire Potential Outlook, the National Interagency Fire Center noted that "Above normal significant fire potential is forecast across portions of Southern California."
Friday, January 3rd, 2025 (Four Days Before)
The National Weather Service (NWS) Los Angeles/Oxnard office issued an early Fire Weather Watch in anticipation of a coming Santa Ana windstorm. In a bulletin at 2:19 PM PST, the NWS warned of “potential strong north to northeast winds and low relative humidity” from late Tuesday (January 7th) morning through Friday (January 10th) across much of Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
The forecast discussion noted “the most likely outcome” was an extended period of Red Flag conditions, with damaging winds increasing the risk of downed trees and power outages. This watch was one of the first formal alerts signaling that an unusually severe wind event – and corresponding fire danger – was on the way.
Note: The Fire Weather Watch and forecast acknowledged the uncertainty in the wind event, but reflected an increase in confidence of the forecast following the Area Forecast Discussion on January 2nd, 2025, which acknowledged the Extreme Fire-Weather Risk, discussed possible scenarios, but did not issue a Fire Weather Watch.
In their January 2nd, 2025 Fire Potential Outlook, the National Interagency Fire Center noted again noted the "Above normal significant fire potential is forecast across portions of southern California" and highlighted the "near record dry conditions" in the region.
Sunday, January 5th, 2025 (Two Days Before)
With forecast confidence growing, public warnings intensified. As published in the Los Angeles Times, the NWS cautioned that Santa Ana wind gusts of 55–80 mph were likely by Tuesday/Wednesday, putting the dry region at “major risk” of wildfires.
This article quoted the NWS Warning that “any fire this week may grow rapidly in size with extreme fire behavior.”
Monday, January 6th, 2025 (The Day Before)
Forecasters left no doubt about the severity of the looming windstorm. The NWS upgraded its watches to official warnings, issuing a High Wind Warning and a Red Flag Warning for much of the Los Angeles and Ventura County region, effective Tuesday morning.
In an unusually dire message on social media, NWS Los Angeles/Oxnard warned of a “LIFE-THREATENING, DESTRUCTIVE” Santa Ana windstorm expected from Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday morning, even calling it “likely the most destructive windstorm seen since 2011.”
The alert stressed that areas “not typically windy will be impacted,” with sustained winds 30–50 mph and widespread gusts 80+ mph (100+ mph in the mountains). Residents were implored to “stay indoors, away from windows” and to prepare for widespread power outages. This stark language – virtually never used for Southern California winter weather – underscored how extraordinary and dangerous the event would be.
Tuesday Morning, January 7, 2025 (Hours Before Fires Ignited)
By Tuesday morning, the predicted Santa Ana winds were already arriving.
At 10:00 AM, the Red Flag Warning officially went into effect for Los Angeles and Ventura counties (to remain in place through Thursday evening).
The NWS and local officials continued issuing updates as conditions deteriorated. Forecasters highlighted specific areas of greatest concern – notably communities between and along the 118 and 210 freeway corridors from Simi Valley to Claremont, encompassing the San Fernando and San Gabriel Valley foothills.
These normally sheltered locations were warned they could experience unprecedented winds due to the event’s unusual dynamics.
The worst of the winds were expected Tuesday night into early Wednesday, with one NWS update calling it a “particularly dangerous situation” for parts of Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties during the pre-dawn hours Wednesday (7 AM–1 PM), when widespread 40–60 mph gusts coupled with bone-dry air could cause any new fires to spread “VERY rapidly”.
The NOAA Storm Prediction Center even took the rare step of designating Southern California under an “Extreme” fire weather risk for Jan. 8, its highest category, reflecting the dire potential if fires ignited.
Tuesday Late Morning - Early Evening, January 7th (Fire Ignition)
At around 10:30 a.m. PST, the Palisades Fire ignited near the Pacific Palisades neighborhood in Los Angeles, rapidly expanding to 5,000 acres.
At around 6:15 p.m. PST, the Eaton Fire ignited as a brush fire in Eaton Canyon in the Altadena-Pasadena area. Within six hours, the fire had grown to 1,000 acres.
At around 10:10 p.m. PST, the Hurst Fire started just north of the Foothill Freeway between the Golden State Freeway-Antelope Valley Freeway split, and grew to 50 acres within 10 minutes.
Assessment, Pre-Incident Actions, and Outcomes
The following assessment reviews the effectiveness and limitations of pre-incident notifications leading up to the 2025 Los Angeles Fires. It identifies key actions taken and their impact on the eventual outcomes.
General Assessment of Pre-Fire Notifications
The cascade of public notifications in early January 2025 were remarkable for its lead time, strong wording, and broad dissemination. It’s clear that meteorologists and authorities anticipated this event far in advance and took an aggressive tone to convey the danger. In the context of wildfire disasters:
The National Weather Service’s use of phrases like “life-threatening and destructive windstorm” and “extreme fire risk” in the image above was virtually unprecedented for the winter months in Los Angeles. Such dire language is typically reserved for the most severe scenarios, indicating that forecasters were not hesitant to raise alarms. This proved prescient – the event indeed was extreme.
The warnings were timely (starting several days before January 7) and multi-pronged. They came through official weather bulletins, social media blasts, press releases from state and local governments, and prominent coverage on local news outlets (Los Angles Times, CBS News). In essence, people paying attention to news or social media in the Los Angeles area in the first week of January 2025 had ample notice that an unusually dangerous wind-driven fire scenario was looming.
Officials rapidly issued evacuation orders once flames appeared on January 7th. It is important to note that Los Angeles County did issue faulty evacuation alerts on January 9th (two days post-ignition) related to new fires. While that is a distinct event from any alerts and warning on January 7th, discussions around evacuation orders often include this event.
The analysis above does not account for the additional social media and face-to-face sharing of pre-incident conditions. While that degree of communication can not be quantified, it is greater than zero.
In short, from a communications standpoint, virtually every possible channel had been used to warn Southern California residents ahead of January 7 that an exceptional windstorm and fire threat was coming.
Pre-Incident Actions
There are strong indications that these advance alerts helped authorities prepare and likely saved lives.
Los Angeles activated the city's Emergency Operations Center, on Monday, January 6th, 2025, in response to the National Weather Service's warnings.
State-Level Pre-Positioning: By January 6th, 2025 (day prior), Governor Gavin Newsom announced the mobilization and pre-positioning of firefighting crews, engines, aircraft and other assets. This included 65 fire engines (plus water tenders, bulldozers and teams totaling over 100 personnel)deployed through the state mutual aid system to Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Santa Barbara counties.
Los Angeles County and City Fire Department Pre-Positioning: While both agencies did pre-position resources, they have received criticism for holding some firefighters in reserve.
Public messaging about avoiding any sparks (from machinery, cigarettes, etc.) during the wind event may have averted some human-caused fire starts during that critical window, though it is impossible to confirm.
Outcomes
In terms of public response, while many did take precautions, the sheer scale and speed of the fires meant that tragedy was not entirely averted. At least 30 people lost their lives in the Los Angeles-area fires, which is a somber reminder that even the best warnings cannot eliminate all risk – especially when faced with a “perfect storm” of weather and fuel conditions.
The challenge going forward is converting such thorough warnings into equally thorough preventive measures and public preparedness, to reduce the human and property toll when nature aligns against us.
How to Strengthen Your Pre-Incident Readiness
The Los Angeles Fires of 2025 offered an unusually extensive period of pre-incident messaging. While it's rare to have multiple days of clear and intense warnings before an incident (outside of hurricanes), organizations can learn a great deal from how this situation unfolded.
Below are five key recommendations—each presenting a core capability—that organizations can adopt to enhance readiness, reduce uncertainty, and respond confidently to future incidents.
Recommendation #1: Establish Clear Watch Points and Action Points
Clearly defined thresholds are critical to managing potential threats.
Watch Points are clearly established indicators that signal when an organization should begin closely monitoring potentially threatening or hazardous conditions and share situational awareness internally.
Action Points are specific thresholds at which organizations shift into proactive pre-incident preparations, ensuring readiness for a quick and efficient response if the threat materializes.
Recommendations:
Clearly identify your Watch Points and Action Points. For example, in wind-driven fires, critical Watch Points might include forecasts of high wind speeds, low humidity, and drought conditions. Action Points might be an intensification of sustained wind speeds or the ignition of a fire in another jurisdiction.
Create explicit "if-then" protocols to transition from Watch Points to Action Points. Clearly outline when you escalate from monitoring into proactive resource allocation or public communication.
Establish clear protocols for rapidly sharing Watch and Action Point information internally. Ensure key stakeholders—including elected officials, executives, and operational leaders—understand and agree upon these thresholds, and the actions taken when they are met, ahead of time.
Clearly defined Watch and Action Points shorten the time between recognition and decision-making, ensuring decision-makers are already informed and prepared for rapid, effective response.
🔓Academy Subscribers: Deepen your readiness and ensure clarity around Watch and Action Points with these articles and plays:
Responding to General Alerts with Precision: Guidance on acting decisively when facing broad alerts.
Getting Executive Attention Right: How to Effectively Share Situational Awareness Updates: Recommendations for clearly communicating critical information to decision-makers.
Seven Actions Executives Can Take to Prepare Themselves Before High-Stakes Events: Steps for leaders to proactively improve their readiness ahead of major incidents.
Recommendation #2: Document Your Decision-making Processes Clearly and Consistently
Post-incident scrutiny frequently revolves around three questions:
What did you know?
When did you know it?
What did you do about it?
Without structured documentation, answering these questions is challenging and can potentially damage credibility. Documentation isn't solely a mechanism to protect decision-makers after the fact. More importantly, it instills discipline, clarity, and accountability into your pre-incident decision-making process.
Recommendations:
Adopt consistent methods of documenting key pre-incident meetings, situational assessments, decisions made (or deferred), and their rationale.
Establish clear expectations and responsibilities for documentation among your senior operational and executive teams.
Regularly practice and reinforce these methods prior to incidents to ensure they become routine.
Documentation ensures clear context around decisions made before outcomes were known, reinforcing trust, clarity, and confidence throughout your organization.
Recommendation #3: Strengthen Your Public Communication Strategy
Public messaging prior to an incident is vital in reducing community vulnerability. It consists of two distinct but complementary phases:
Phase 1 – Pre-incident Educational Messaging:
Clearly communicate general alert conditions to the public who are already paying attention.
Use elevated risk conditions as an educational tool to boost urgency, provide context, and motivate preparedness actions (e.g., packing emergency kits, identifying evacuation routes).
Even if not everyone prepares, effectively messaging pre-incident conditions reduces overall vulnerability, decreasing the demands placed on response teams if an incident escalates.
Phase 2 – Immediate Alerts and Incident-Start Communication:
Pre-script and rehearse rapid messaging templates and activation protocols. Once you have created the general awareness to the risk, organizations need to be able to provide the public with the specific information needed when an incident occurs.
Clearly identify mandatory elements of an immediate alert (location specifics, evacuation instructions, shelter locations, etc.).
Prioritize rapid, authoritative posting to websites and social media channels, ensuring easy access to clear, actionable information.
Efficiently delivering clear public communications immediately at incident onset accelerates evacuations, reduces confusion, and minimizes the demands on public safety organizations dealing with a new incident.
Recommendation #4: Establish a Decision-Making Framework for Pre-positioning Resources
Pre-positioning resources involves significant judgment calls about balancing readiness and resource utilization. Decisions can have direct financial implications, and incorrect timing can carry severe organizational and personal consequences. Establishing a clear, structured framework can reduce decision-making delays or confusion.
Recommendation: Develop a high-level framework to make pre-positioning decisions, considering these simplified guiding questions:
Likelihood: How probable is it that a threat crosses your Action Points threshold?
Impact: What are the potential human, operational, and financial consequences if resources aren't in place?
Time: When does this decision need to be made? Once the decision is made, how long will it take for those resources to be in place?
Cost and Scalability: Can resources be deployed incrementally to balance readiness and cost?
Decision Ownership: Who must approve the decision, and who is accountable?
This straightforward framework helps clarify the decision-making rationale, reducing hesitation when critical decisions must be made rapidly.
Recommendation #5: Conduct an Effective "Rehearsals of Concepts" Event for Incident Response
A Rehearsal of Concepts Event is critical for aligning your response team before an incident occurs. Done well, it dramatically increases confidence, cohesion, and responsiveness. If facilitated poorly, these events can undermine confidence and delay impactful response operations.
Recommendations:
Regularly schedule short, structured rehearsals to refresh roles, responsibilities, and response strategies, should the threat/hazard materialize.
Facilitate rehearsals clearly and succinctly, ensuring leaders understand the organizational chart, responsibilities, and how coordination will unfold.
Reinforce the expectation of collaborative communication, clarity, and alignment.
The value of rehearsals helps ensure your team transitions effectively into a high-stakes operational environment.
In Closing
Ultimately, your organization's readiness hinges on distinguishing between what you can control, what you can influence, and what is beyond your reach.The 2025 Los Angeles Fires showed the tremendous value—and inherent challenges—of proactive, pre-incident readiness.
Organizations that effectively apply these recommendations and develop the needed capabilities can confidently navigate uncertainty, rapidly mobilize, and communicate clearly. Even though perfect community-wide preparation isn't achievable, these capabilities position your team left of bang—prepared to act decisively before incidents occur—significantly reducing vulnerabilities, improving outcomes, and strengthening resilience.