Across Los Angeles, phones rang loudly with an alert to evacuate just before 4 p.m. on Thursday.
The city Emergency Management Department said the alert was sent “in ERROR.” “Evacuation orders have not changed,” the department said in a post on X.
Times staff across the metropolitan area — from Long Beach to Echo Park and beyond — received the alert, which did not appear to discriminate by distance from any particular fire.
“This is an emergency message from the Los Angeles County Fire Department,” the notice read. “An EVACUATION WARNING has been issued in your area.”
In the media room at the city of Los Angeles Emergency Operations Center in downtown Los Angeles, phones of elected officials, staffers and a handful of reporters screeched in unison.
With her back to a giant glass wall separating the media area from the floor of the operations center, newly sworn in Rep. Luz Rivas — who had been deep in conversation with fellow new Rep. George Whitesides — exclaimed that she’d received the alert to her 818 number.
Staffers speculated whether the alert was related to a nascent fire in West Hills, until a reporter with a 310 area code number said she’d also received the alert.
In an Atwater village Chipotle, customers and employees alike sighed and picked up their phones.
“Are we closing?” asked one employee who was slicing chicken in the back of the kitchen.
“It’s a warning, not an order,” responded another employee, scanning the alert. “If it’s an order, we have to close right away.”
Then she turned back to her customer: “Black beans, right?”
The alerts linked to alertla.org, a site which had crashed shortly after the alert went out.
The city of Santa Monica responded on X, saying the notifications did not apply there.
A second alert went out around 4:20 p.m. saying that the evacuation warning was sent in error and was meant to apply only to the Kenneth fire.