After fires and a tsunami, a push to force L.A. to finally analyze evacuation routes

After an investigation by The Times found Los Angeles had failed to publicly comply with a 2019 law requiring it to analyze the capacity, safety and viability of its evacuation routes, Councilmember Traci Park filed a motion that would force the city to comply.

Park, who said the city has yet to provide satisfactory answers to her questions on evacuation planning, sees understanding evacuation capabilities as essential to Pacific Palisades’ recovery.

“In the wake of this disaster in the Pacific Palisades, I don’t know how we have a single conversation about planning for the future that isn’t tied to public safety and evacuation routes and emergency preparedness,” she said.

Former state legislator Marc Levine wrote the 2019 law, Assembly Bill 747, after hearing about the horrific scenes of gridlock on the streets of Paradise, Calif., over the radio during the 2018 Camp fire.

The law requires local governments to include these evacuation analyses in the safety element of their general plans, which serve as the blueprint for long-term development of cities and counties. Yet, the city’s safety element includes no such analysis.

“The fact that local government leaders would not do as much as they can to protect human life and safety is just shocking to me,” Levine said in July upon learning of both the city’s and county’s limited efforts to analyze their evacuation routes.

Park, who said she’s been fighting for better evacuation planning since she took office in 2022, saw the Palisades’ agonizingly slow and chaotic January evacuation firsthand.

“I was out there on January 7,” she said. “The gridlock and the choke points were everywhere. The chaotic communication, inconsistent direction during the evacuation, the failure to start the evacuation sooner ... all of that is known and foreseeable in the Pacific Palisades.”

Since the fire, Park has had little luck getting evacuation information from the city.

“I have asked repeatedly for information, plans, routes, education with the community, simulations and drills, and I have yet to receive satisfactory answers to my questions,” she said.

Park added that she has not seen any simulated evacuations under different emergency scenarios, nor any analyses predicting evacuation times, both of which were recommended by the state agency tasked with providing guidance on AB 747 compliance.

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In a statement to The Times, the city’s planning department, responsible for writing and updating the safety element, said it did not publicize evacuation routes since “large urban cities such as the City of Los Angeles are high profile targets for terrorist attacks.”

Levine categorized the response as a “dubious claim.” In a statement to The Times, he said, “It is a mystery how hiding evacuation route capacity and viability can save lives when community members are fleeing a natural disaster.”

Park — who prefaced that the planning department has otherwise been “bending over backward” to help with recovery — said the department’s argument is “cutting the baloney a little thick.”

“I have a difficult time accepting that as a plausible argument in a day and age where we have Google Earth that can show us every damn pothole in the roadway,” she said. “I don’t think our major roads in and out of the City of Los Angeles are a secret to anyone.”

The planning department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the motion.

Park’s motion, if adopted, would require the planning department to report back to the City Council within 30 days listing all evacuation routes in high-risk areas within her district, including an assessment of the routes’ capacities, potential bottlenecks, physical hazards, viability under emergency scenarios including wildfire and tsunamis and strategies for mitigating traffic issues.

“The Palisades fire underscored just how vulnerable our hillside communities remain,” the motion states. The fire — along with Tuesday’s tsunami advisory — “reaffirms the urgent need to comply with AB 747 and update the City’s emergency planning to reflect current realities.”

The city has publicly provided tsunami evacuation routes — identifying coastal routes to get residents away from the ocean — but they do not include an analysis of traffic conditions in such a scenario, nor do they include routes for other possible disasters including wildfires and earthquakes.

Park’s district is particularly vulnerable to natural disasters, encompassing the hillside, brush-filled communities of Pacific Palisades and Brentwood as well as the coastal neighborhoods of Venice and Playa del Rey.

Park emphasized that the Palisades was not the only area to experience evacuation challenges in January.

“By the time the fire had made its way over to Brentwood, ... when we had plenty of time to prepare — that evacuation was gridlocked everywhere,” she said. “The evacuation out of Hollywood was a nightmare.”

Park, who has become the face of recovery for many Pacific Palisades residents, recently urged Gov. Gavin Newsom to suspend a housing law that allows property owners to redevelop single-family homes into duplexes, which could significantly increase housing density in the high fire hazard area.

Newsom granted the request from Park and other local leaders on Wednesday.

Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.