The Brief

It’s time for World Series Dodger baseball! Yes, the Dodgers are back in the Fall Classic and the matchup is a rivalry as old as time itself. East versus West. The Big Apple versus the City of Angels. Subway versus freeway. Chopped cheese versus street tacos. You get the idea…it’s the New York Yankees versus YOUR Los Angeles Dodgers. And Game 1 is tonight, right here in Los Angeles.

If you’re just tuning in to this year’s MLB season and want to familiarize yourself with the competitors and the storylines so you’re in the know when watching with family, friends or fellow Dodger fans at your local watering hole, you’ve come to the right place! This guide will help catch you up on how the Dodgers got here, and what they need to do to win it all.

Who plays in the World Series?

Also known as the Fall Classic, the World Series is a best-of-seven series between the champions of Major League’s Baseball’s two leagues — the American League and the National League. The first team to win four games will be crowned champions of baseball.

Win a bar bet: The MLB’s top prize is called the Commissioner’s Trophy — this circular job in the middle with all the flags.

So, who gets home field advantage? In baseball, it’s decided by the team with the highest winning percentage. This year, that’s the Dodgers. Their 98-64 record was the best in baseball this year, earning them a .605 winning percentage (i.e. they won 60.5% of the games they played). This means that should the series go the full seven games, the Dodgers will get to play four of those games in L.A.

When are the games?

All games will be broadcast on Fox and Fox Deportes. The times here are all for the West Coast, and remember it's the best of seven so the series could be as short as four games if one team sweeps.

• Game 1: Friday, Oct. 25 at 5:08 p.m. at Dodger Stadium
• Game 2: Saturday, Oct. 26 at 5:08 p.m.. at Dodger Stadium
• Game 3: Monday, Oct. 28 at 5:08 p.m. at Yankee Stadium
• Game 4: Tuesday, Oct. 29 at 5:08 p.m. at Yankee Stadium
• Game 5 (if necessary): Wednesday, Oct. 30 at 5:08 p.m. at Yankee Stadium
• Game 6 (if necessary): Friday, Nov. 1 at 5:08 p.m. at Dodger Stadium
• Game 7 (if necessary): Saturday, Nov. 2 at 5:08 p.m. at Dodger Stadium

How the Dodgers got here and what’s on the line

The Dodgers had the best record in the National League, meaning they skipped the first playoff round. They then beat division rival San Diego Padres in the National League Division Series (NLDS). (That was a revenge series — the Padres bounced them out of the playoffs in 2022.)

The Dodgers then knocked off the upstart New York Mets in six games in the National League Championship Series (NLCS), punching their ticket to the Fall Classic.

Win a bar bet: If the Dodgers win, it will be their eighth World Series title, tying them with the rival San Francisco Giants for fifth most of any team.

Their opponent: The Yankees had the best record in the American League this year. They, too, got a bye in the Wildcard Round before cruising past the Kansas City Royals in the American League Division Series (ALDS) and then toppling the Cleveland Guardians in the American League Championship Series (ALCS).

If the Yankees win, it will be their 28th World Series title — the most of any team in baseball — and their first since 2009.

Key storylines

Proving the doubters wrong: The last time the Dodgers missed the playoffs, it was October 2012. President Barack Obama was running for reelection, the iPhone 5 had just been released and Korean rapper Psy was peaking on the pop charts with his viral hit song “Gangnam Style.” The Dodgers have been among the best teams in baseball and have made the playoffs in each of the 12 years since, including four trips to the World Series (counting this year) — but have only one championship to show for it. A win this year would go a long way in proving that the Dodgers are more than just a great regular season team, and that they can win when it matters most.

Winning it for Fernando: Following the death of iconic Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela earlier this week, Los Angeles now has an extra incentive to motivate them -- winning it all in honor of the late legend.

Winning it “for real”: The Dodgers won the World Series in 2020, but it was during a COVID-shortened season. Teams played just 60 games, compared to the usual 162, in empty ballparks. Now, a championship is a championship in our eyes, but that hasn’t stopped sports talking heads and fans of other teams from suggesting that the 2020 title means less because the season was shortened. Winning a World Series in a full season would silence those critics.

Refreshing a rivalry: On the surface, you wouldn’t really call the Dodgers and Yankees “bitter rivals.” The Dodgers’ most-hated rivals are the San Francisco Giants, and the Yankees’ are the Boston Red Sox. But there’s actually a lot of history to this matchup because — like all the new good bagel places in town, the Dodgers are a New York import. They used to be the Brooklyn Dodgers, until moving here in 1957, and they were the Yankees’ crosstown rivals. And this year is the 12th World Series matchup between the Dodgers and Yankees, the most in MLB history. The Yankees do have the historical edge in the matchup, winning eight of the previous 11 World Series matchups between the teams.

Superstars collide: Dodgers’ designated hitter Shohei Ohtani and Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge are arguably the two best players in baseball. Both have won MVP awards (and will likely each win another this year), both are coming off 50+ home run seasons and both are seeking their first World Series. Surprisingly, it’s rare to see this much star power in a World Series — it’s the first time ever that two players who hit 50+ home runs in a season face off in the World Series.

Dodgers players to watch

Shohei Ohtani, designated hitter

The phenom. The $700 million man. The Sho. Shotime. We’ve never seen a baseball player quite like Shohei Ohtani. He is a once-in-a-generation player who can hit, run and even pitch, though that part of his game has been shut down this year as he recovers from elbow surgery he had in 2023 (you’re welcome, New York). He's the Dodgers' designated hitter, meaning he bats in the lineup but does not play a defensive position in the field. This year, he became the first player EVER to record a 50 home run, 50 stolen base season.

If the Dodgers are going to win the World Series, they’re going to need him to replicate his offensive performance from the regular season. That could be complicated by the fact that Ohtani is nursing an injury. He suffered a subluxation (partial dislocation) of his shoulder as he slid into second base during a steal attempt in Game 2, but he is in the starting lineup for Game 3 so it appears he'll try to play through it.

Mookie Betts, right field

Since arriving in L.A. in 2020 from the Boston Red Sox, Markus Lynn “Mookie” Betts has been the heart and soul of the Dodgers lineup. He’s also a generational baseball talent:

Mookie has played outfield most of his career in the big leagues, and has anchored the Dodgers outfield so far in the World Series, but the last two years he’s been called on to play in the infield to help his team fill defensive gaps. He’s the kind of selfless team player you can’t help but root for, and he also brings World Series experience to the team — he won rings in 2018 with the Red Sox and 2020 with the Dodgers. And if that wasn’t enough to make you a fan, get this: he’s made the World Series in both baseball … and bowling. Here he is bowling a perfect 300 game in the 2017 World Series of Bowling:

Freddie Freeman, first base

Together with Shohei and Mookie, Freddie Freeman completes the “Big 3” in the Dodgers lineup.

He missed a couple games due to injury in the NLCS, but has played every game of the World Series so far and has been the biggest offensive contributor. Freeman has homered in each World Series game so far, including a game-winning, walk-off grand slam in Game 1. His homer in Game 4 makes SIX straight World Series games (dating back to his time with the Atlanta Braves when they won it all in 2021) where he's gone yard, which is an MLB record:

Standing 6-foot-5, Freddie’s an imposing figure when he steps up to the plate. But don’t let his towering stature fool you — he's got a million dollar smile and fellow players will tell you he’s one of the nicest guys in the league. Don’t believe me? Here’s Freddie reading nice tweets about himself:

How many people have nice things said about them on X these days? Freddie does.

Tommy Edman, shortstop & center field

Even though he joined the team in the middle of the season after being traded from the St. Louis Cardinals, this dual-threat has been a huge factor in the Dodgers’ postseason success. He’s an excellent defensive player who plays both shortstop and center field, which are considered the “captain” positions of the infield and outfield, respectively. His defining moment came in Game 6 of the Championship Series when he hit a two-run home run to give the Dodgers a 4-1 lead:

Edman also has local roots — he grew up in La Jolla and his mom is from Los Angeles.

Maureen Edman, Tommy Edman's mom, kisses him on the cheek after the Dodgers defeated the New York Mets to advance to the World Series.

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Kiké Hernández, utility

If you’re going to win a World Series, you need a Kiké on your team. Enrique “Kiké” Hernández isn’t a superstar like Mookie Betts or Shohei Ohtani. During the regular season, his stats are nothing to write home about. But during the playoffs? He’s got that dog in him. He's a utility player, meaning he can play pretty much any position on the field. So far this postseason he’s hit a couple of huge home runs for the Dodgers, including this home run in the decisive Game 5 of the Division Series that helped propel his team to the next round of the playoffs:

And this two-run homer in Game 3 of the Championship Series to give the Dodgers a 4-0 lead:

Bottom line? Kiké is CLUTCH in October. The Dodgers will need more “Playoff Kiké” in the World Series if they want to win it all.

The entire Dodgers bullpen

You may hear the term “bullpen series” in conversations about Dodgers pitching for the World Series. While the Dodgers’ starters are solid, none of them are expected to pitch particularly deep into games. That means that the responsibility of keeping the powerful Yankees’ bats quiet will likely rest on the shoulders of the Dodgers’ relief pitchers. Expect to see plenty of guys like Ben Casparius, Anthony Banda, Michael Kopech and Blake Treinen, who came through clutch for the Dodgers in the conclusive Game 6 of the NLCS:

Yankees players to watch

Aaron Judge, center field

Standing 6-foot-7 and weighing 282 lbs., New York Yankees captain and outfielder Aaron Judge is one of the most imposing figures in baseball. He is a towering human who hits towering home runs — 58 of them during the regular season — and he’s expected to win the American League MVP Award this year. Here he is punishing a poor, defenseless baseball in the ALCS:

Win a bar bet: Judge is from Sacramento and played college baseball at Fresno State.

Juan Soto, right field

Don’t let his youth fool you, this 25-year-old phenom is the real deal. Soto already has a World Series ring, which he won with the Washington Nationals in 2019 at age 21. He was also the hero of the ALCS this year for the Yankees — he smashed a 3-run-homer in the 10th inning of Game 6 to give the Yankees the lead, and ultimately the series-winning victory:

Giancarlo Stanton, designated hitter

The only thing you really need to know about Stanton is that he hits baseballs very, very far. In 2015, while he was with the Miami Marlins, he hit a home run out of Dodger Stadium. Literally:

And when he makes contact, he hits the ball VERY hard. Watch how fast this ball comes off the bat:

For those of you without a radar gun built into your brain, that ball traveled 446 feet and came off the bat at a speed of 117.5 miles per hour, according to the MLB’s metric tracking system Statcast. Look for Dodgers pitchers to try and pitch around Stanton.

Gerrit Cole, starting pitcher

The ace pitcher of the Yankees staff, Gerrit Cole, is expected to start Game 1 of the World Series Friday night. He’s got devastating pitches that can make even the best hitter miss, and the longer he goes the harder he gets to hit:

Luke Weaver, closing pitcher

Sure, he might be wiry, but don’t sleep on Yankees’ closing pitcher Luke Weaver. His job is to come in to the game in the final inning of the game when his team has the lead and literally close the door on a comeback, like he did here against the Royals in the ALDS:

Weaver’s also an, um, interesting cat, shall we say? But hey, his interviews make for great content.

Celebrate good times

When you’re watching the World Series, you might notice the Dodgers break out some unique celebrations. For example, you’ll likely see this one when a Dodgers hitter gets on base:

It’s believed to have been started by Kiké Hernández during Spring Training this year, and while it’s not exactly clear what its origins are, the internet believes it’s a nod to a dance from the popular anime series Dragon Ball Z.

And if (OK, when) the Dodgers hit a home run, you might see them get showered with sunflower seeds when they return to the dugout after rounding the bases:

This celebration was started by outfielder Teoscar Hernández, who reportedly brought it with him from his days with the Toronto Blue Jays. Which may explain why others on the team don’t quite have the hang of it yet:

We still love you, Mookie. Here’s hoping we see a lot of sunflower seeds flying in the coming week. Go Dodgers!

As part of his sentence for a corruption scheme that diverted millions of tax dollars from feeding needy seniors, a federal judge ordered former Orange County Supervisor Andrew Do to pay the county $878,230 as restitution for his crime.

“He has the ability to pay a fine,” U.S. District Court Judge James V. Selna wrote last June, listing Do’s net worth at about $1.5 million, with a negative monthly cash flow of $8,400.

At an Aug. 11 restitution hearing, the judge ordered Do to pay the first installment of $250,000 within 30 days.

The next day, Do transferred all of his ownership of his family home — estimated by Zillow to be worth $2.2 million — over to his wife, OC Superior Court Judge Cheri Pham, according to a real estate record.

That Sept. 10 due date for the first restitution payment has long since passed, but federal and county officials say Do has yet to pay it.

“He did not make that payment,” said Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesperson for the federal prosecutors’ office that oversaw the case, when asked by LAist about it on Monday. McEvoy said the prosecutors’ office understands “there was no money left in assets” that could be seized.

Leon Page, Orange County’s top lawyer, said county officials are “not aware of any such payment from Andrew Do.”

Do’s attorney, Paul Meyer, declined to comment, saying it would be “inappropriate” to do so.

“It’s hard to believe that so much time has gone by without the restitution being paid,” said Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Law School professor who served decades ago as a senior federal prosecutor at the office that later prosecuted Do.

“It certainly raises questions — if not eyebrows — as to what happened here. Because ordinarily the U.S. Attorney's Office would take victim restitution orders quite seriously.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office can file a court motion if they discover a significant change in the defendant’s economic circumstances that affect their to pay restitution, according to a federal Justice Department guide. The prosecutors’ office also “is required to certify to the Court that victims who are owed restitution are notified about such material changes,” the guide states.

The court’s official online records show no filings regarding any changes in Do’s financial circumstances, or his apparent failure to pay the court-ordered restitution that was due six months ago.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office’s spokesperson has not responded to a follow up request for comment. They previously declined to answer any further questions about the situation.

Do turned himself into federal prison on Aug. 15, three days after transferring ownership of his family home to his wife. Meanwhile, he continues to collect about $7,300 per month from his county pension, according to the pension system. In addition, this January he received a $12,771 refund from the pension system of all the contributions he made as a supervisor, from when his crime began in June 2020 until he resigned in October 2024.

What happened?

Federal authorities say their understanding is no money was available for them to seize.

“When a defendant fails to pay a restitution order, our office’s financial litigation unit gets involved and completes a thorough financial investigation to find … any assets that could satisfy the outstanding restitution balance,” McEvoy wrote in an emailed response to LAist.

“We cannot comment on what that investigation found, but our understanding is there was no money left in assets that the government could levy to satisfy that order.”

McEvoy declined to answer follow-up questions.

In response to LAist’s questions, county officials say they’re looking into their options if Do refuses to pay restitution as required.

“We do not believe that he has complied with this order, but we’re verifying that is the case at this time,” said the spokesperson, Molly Nichelson.

Property ownership transferred just after restitution order

Do signed a deed on Aug. 12 transferring to his wife all of his ownership in the North Tustin family home they purchased in 2002, according to an official copy of the document LAist obtained from the county clerk-recorder.

Do's attorney declined to comment on the transfer.

An FBI officer at Andrew Do's house in North Tustin.

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LAist obtained permit records showing substantial renovation work on the house was managed in 2021 by the leader of the same nonprofit from whom Do admitted to receiving kickbacks. The work included a bathroom addition and remodel of the master bathroom and kitchen.

Do also was investigated multiple times by the O.C. District Attorney’s Office, going back to 2015, over allegations he was living at the home illegally outside of the district he was representing as supervisor. No criminal charges were filed.

Pham was the court’s second highest-ranking judge when her husband’s corruption scheme came to light. Their two adult daughters received bribe money for their father as part of the scheme, according to Do’s plea deal.

The corruption scheme

After an LAist investigation prompted a criminal investigation, Do admitted to taking bribes as part of a scheme to divert nearly $8 million from feeding needy seniors during the coronavirus pandemic. He is now serving a five-year sentence in federal prison.

The county alleges its losses from the scheme were much higher — more than $13 million — and is trying to recover it through a lawsuit that is expected to take a long time to work its way through the court.

The restitution Do was ordered to pay is separate from the $3.7 million authorities obtained from properties and bank account money held by others accused of involvement in the scheme. That did not come from Do’s assets. Instead, it came from assets owned by his daughter, as well as a business and nonprofit Do had no formal role at.

The total restitution amount

After the first $250,000 installment due in September, Do is required to pay $25 per quarter while in prison.

When Do entered prison in August, his release date was listed in November 2029 — about 85% of his five-year sentence. Seven months in, his expected time in prison has been shortened by two months, with a new release date in September 2029.

A spokesperson for the federal prison system said they cannot comment on specific people’s confinement conditions but that incarcerated people can earn additional time off of their sentence by completing specific classes and programs.

After leaving prison, the restitution order requires Do to pay $1,000 per month or 10% of his income — whichever is more.

At $1,000 per month, the last of the restitution payments would be in late 2081, when Do would be 118 years old.

A group of Los Angeles County high school students is trying to set a world record by collecting thousands of tennis balls and pickleballs for recycling — and they want your help.

The teens are working to keep the recreational equipment out of landfills through a youth-led recycling initiative called “Another Bounce.”

An estimated 500 million tennis and pickleballs are thrown away each year worldwide, according to the organization. In the U.S. alone, 125 million tennis balls end up in landfills annually, according to Stanford University.

A dozen students are leading the charge as part of their roles in the Junior Board of Habits of Waste, a Brentwood-based nonprofit focused on changing people’s habits and systems to help combat climate change.

“There's so much waste, and nobody really pays as much attention to it as they should,” said Max Ehrman, a 15-year-old Brentwood School freshman and junior board member.

Sheila Morovati, the organization’s founder and president, told LAist the initiative aims to get the sports world involved in sustainability. Pickleball, for example, remains the fastest growing sport in America, with tens of thousands of courts across the country.

“Tennis and pickleballs are one of those things where we are just constantly engaging in wastefulness without thinking twice about it,” Morovati said. “How can we think differently? How can we look at what we're doing every day to this planet and say, ‘Hey, can I do any better?’”

The students are collecting used balls within a 30-mile radius of Pacific Palisades and accepting mailed donations to a Santa Monica warehouse. They’re also advocating for recycling improvements with ball manufacturers and elected officials in Southern California.

The campaign will host a community collection event on April 19. The goal is to gather the donations by Earth Day on April 22.

About the initiative

Morovati said the idea started when some students at her son’s school realized how many balls were getting tossed in the trash after only a few hours of use.

The tennis and pickleballs are not biodegradable and can take more than 400 years to decompose, according to Another Bounce.

The initiative is being led by teens and athletes from several L.A.-area high schools, including Crossroads, Brentwood, Loyola, Harvard Westlake and Windward.

Among the participants are Ford and Boone Casady, 16-year-old twin brothers who attend Crossroads School in Santa Monica and who are among the top ranked junior pickleball players in the country.

“There's been nowhere for these balls to go,” Ford told LAist. “It's generally such a waste, and it's terrible to see that happen in our environment.”

“It's just very sad because I've grown up in the Palisades and in the ocean my entire life, and I've noticed the trash in the ocean,” Boone told LAist. “And I'm worried about the animals that are living in that biome that are having to ingest that plastic and those toxic things that are killing them.”

Morovati, who previously set a world record for the most crayons donated to charity in eight hours, said the ultimate goal is to set a recycling record that can’t be beaten easily. However, one of the challenges is storing the balls until they can be counted.

It was easier, in terms of volume, to get up to the million mark with crayons, she said.

“I think in this instance, even if they get into the 50,000, 100,000 range, I would be thrilled,” she added.

Another Bounce is using a three-pronged approach to collect as many balls for recycling as possible:

• Working with clubs and coaches in the area for a local donation drive and accepting donations from other parts of the country with a warehouse in Santa Monica
• Speaking at city council meetings, including in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, to advocate for ordinances that would require parks, schools and clubs to recycle tennis and pickleballs
• Campaigning for major ball manufacturers to roll out nationwide take-back and recycling programs

“We’re trying to, like, change this narrative and we would like you guys to help us by supporting our mission,” said Max, the Brentwood School student. “Talking to your coaches, talking to your schools, talking to your clubs and trying to get as much involvement as possible.”

All the balls collected by Another Bounce throughout the initiative will be counted for their world record attempt before being recycled.

A Guinness World Records spokesperson told LAist it doesn’t currently monitor the title for the most tennis and pickleballs collected for recycling.

The organization is keeping an eye on the most tennis balls collected for recycling in one week, but no one currently holds it. Anyone attempting the record must collect at least 579 pounds, according to Guinness World Records.

How you can help

There are a few ways you can help the teens reach their recycling goal and set a new world record:

• You can schedule a personal volunteer pick-up by sending an email to another.bounce@gmail.com

• You can also send ball donations via snail mail to:
  C. Wiebe (HoW Donation)
  3000 31st St., Suite C
  Santa Monica, CA 90405
  
• You can send an email to major ball manufacturers, including Wilson and Penn, urging the companies to provide take-back and recycling programs online here

Learn more about Another Bounce and keep up with the students’ progress on its website and on Instagram.

An L.A. county employee who allegedly had “a long history of sleeping on the job” was in charge of emergency workers sending evacuation alerts during critical moments of the Eaton Fire, according to a whistleblower complaint filed with the county.

The complaint was filed late last year by Nick Vaquero, an associate director in the county’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) since 2023. The county’s Chief Executive Office confirmed to LAist that it received the complaint.

Vaquero reiterated the details of his written whistleblower complaint in interviews with LAist. He said he was speaking out now because he believes OEM’s leadership decisions about staffing during the emergency were shortsighted, and he was upset that his oral complaints to his bosses and to the team working on a major after-action report released in September were ignored. He filed his written whistleblower complaint in October.  

Vaquero said he saw Steve Lieberman, a nearly 40-year county employee, asleep at work more than a dozen times in two years prior to Lieberman supervising OEM’s overnight shift from the evening of Jan. 7 through the morning of Jan. 8, 2025. The whistleblower complaint alleges Lieberman was “sleeping in his office” during his overnight shift.

By the time Lieberman’s shift began, the Palisades Fire had devastated whole neighborhoods, multiple new fires had started, including the Eaton Fire, and the National Weather Service had the region under critical fire weather warnings. That night, the Eaton Fire went on to devastate Altadena, killing 19 people. The lack of any evacuation alert for West Altadena before 3:25 a.m. Jan. 8 has spurred state and local investigations.

LAist spoke with several witnesses to Lieberman’s on-the-job sleeping who corroborated Vaquero’s account about Lieberman’s history. LAist is not naming these sources, who said they fear their careers and reputations could be seriously harmed by speaking out publicly.

Lieberman told LAist in a phone interview that he was not asleep on the overnight shift from Jan. 7 to 8. He acknowledged that he may have fallen asleep at work at times over the years.

“I’m not going to say that never happened in 38 years,” Lieberman said. “I’m 63 years old. I’ve got some health issues. We worked a lot of overtime.”

He said he didn’t sleep at work “as a general rule, hell no.”

Lieberman, who retired two months after the fires, told LAist he had no specific recollections from the night he was on duty during the fires. He denied he would have been sleeping during a major disaster, calling Vaquero’s assertion “bogus” and saying it’s “amusing” that this issue is coming up more than a year later.

Kevin McGowan, OEM’s director, said in a statement: “It is unacceptable for anyone in the midst of an emergency response to fall asleep, and during the night in question, both I and my deputy only saw Steve [Lieberman] fully awake and doing his job. For LAist to imply otherwise is irresponsible and unsupported by the facts.”

A county response — sent via email from an OEM address and labeled “County Response to Media Questions” — stated McGowan and his deputy, Leslie Luke, said they “do not believe that Steve Lieberman regularly slept on the job.”

The county response also noted Lieberman had successfully served in the same role “during numerous prior disasters, including during the pandemic.”

Instead, they pointed to the McChrystal Group’s findings in an after-action report released last year that the extreme and chaotic nature of the Eaton Fire exacerbated long-running systemic challenges at the office, including a small staff and a lack of training and formalized procedures.

Vaquero, for his part, said he worries that despite recent and proposed changes at OEM, the public remains at risk. In his complaint and in interviews, he said systems and leadership in OEM aren’t ready for the next major emergency.

“There is an entrenched pattern of mismanagement within the Office of Emergency Management,” Vaquero wrote in the complaint.

“The agency’s [OEM’s] ability to perform its emergency management mission and safeguard county residents” has been “materially degraded,” he wrote.

The days leading up to the fire

In the week before the Eaton and Palisades fires sparked, Vaquero said he was acutely aware the weather forecast could present a nightmare scenario. At the time, his job included creating a staff roster spelling out OEM staffers’ roles in an emergency, he said.

He said he put together a roster in case a fire started and the Emergency Operations Center needed to activate, meaning they’d need to staff up to monitor and respond to the situation 24/7.

Vaquero was already concerned the office was stretched thin. The office had 37 staffers. Last year’s budget was about $14.5 million. Its mandate is to comprehensively plan for, respond to and recover from “large-scale emergencies and disasters” in a county of more than 10 million residents.

The McChrystal after-action report noted significantly larger departments in other metropolitan areas. New York City, with a population of about 8.5 million, has some 200 staffers in its emergency management department and a budget of about $88 million. San Diego County, with 3.3 million people, has an emergency department of 43 people with a budget over $12 million.

There were additional factors at play in L.A. County at the time of the fires. Vaquero said coming out of the holiday season meant available staff was thinner than usual.

He said his initial plan for staffing, which he shared with leadership Jan. 3 after warnings about dangerous fire weather coming, is not the one implemented. The initial plan drafted by Vaquero and documented in emails reviewed by LAist had him taking on daytime director duties at the Emergency Operations Center. That would put him in person at the building in East L.A., where OEM staff and partner agency representatives can monitor disasters, coordinate and send alerts to the public. He said he assigned McGowan, his boss, as lead on public communication.

The National Weather Service forecast on Jan. 2, 2025.

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National Weather Service/Fire Safety Resource Institute report

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For the night shift, the emails show Vaquero scheduled Luke, the department’s No. 2, as the center’s director. In both shifts, Vaquero said he assigned staff who he believed to be best trained on the county’s new alerts and warnings systems in the relevant roles. According to the McChrystal report, only two OEM staff were fully trained on the new systems.

One staffer fully trained on the new Genasys system was scheduled to be in Mississippi the week of Jan. 6 for a pre-approved training.

Vaquero said he suggested invoking OEM’s practice of canceling trainings in case of a potential major emergency to argue for keeping that staffer in L.A. He said he was told leadership had fought too hard for the person to go to the training to cancel.

“Everything that was lining up showed that this was going to be the most catastrophic wind storm that we'd ever had, like even worse than the 2011 windstorm,” Vaquero told LAist. “So the fact that we were kind of going back and forth about, ‘Oh, well who's available?’ No, every person should have been available.”

In its statement to LAist, the county wrote that at the time of the fires, there was no official policy to cancel all trainings in the case of significant weather forecasts and that staffing and activation decisions “scale to the incident.”

“OEM has to balance those with the tradeoffs of having a very small staff and having the staff trained and capable of performing very complex tasks,” the county statement said. They noted that one of the recommendations from the McChrystal Group after-action report “is to establish clearer staffing protocols and greater surge capacity so those decisions can be made more consistently in future events, and that work is underway.”

They added that the staffer left for the training Jan. 5 and that the following day, the National Weather Service issued its warning of a “particularly dangerous situation.”

“Had that rare forecast been issued before her departure, the training would have been canceled,” the county said.

Vaquero told LAist that after he made the initial schedule, McGowan and Luke told him to take them both off the Emergency Operations Center staffing roster altogether. Instead, he said they told him to designate them as agency administrators, meaning they could be at incident command posts with county sheriff and fire officials. The county told LAist assigning those roles to top leadership has become a common practice, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020.

Vaquero said Luke told him to put Lieberman, another associate director, on the night shift.

Vaquero told LAist he expressed his concerns about Lieberman being on the night shift to OEM leadership. In his whistleblower complaint, Vaquero wrote: Lieberman “was a known liability that was allowed to continue leading OEM as an Associate Director despite years of documented disregard for the work. Steve [Lieberman] sleeping in meetings became a running joke in the office, with Kevin [McGowan] even acknowledging the issue, and little action had been taken against him leading up to this incident."

Nick Vaquero's 12-hour shift at the county Office of Emergency Management was ending as the Eaton Fire began on the evening of Jan. 7, 2025. He awoke to what he called "the doomsday scenario" in Altadena.

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Carlin Stiehl

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Vaquero described one instance a few months before the fires, in which he said Lieberman fell asleep during a meeting led by McGowan. Vaquero told LAist that McGowan asked the sleeping Lieberman a question, then joked to those in the room that he’d ask again when he woke up.

In another instance in early 2024 when Vaquero said he witnessed Lieberman asleep in a meeting, Vaquero told LAist he approached McGowan afterward to express his frustration, and he said McGowan joked that Vaquero didn’t understand the context. Vaquero said McGowan told him that in the past Lieberman would sleep all day, not just a few hours.

Others with knowledge of the situation told LAist they also witnessed Lieberman asleep during meetings on at least three occasions, as well as in his office.

McGowan declined an interview request but said in a written statement that “no performance concerns of that nature were raised through supervisory channels.”

Lieberman was assigned to the Office of Emergency Management after county supervisors merged his previous department, the Office of Public Safety, with the county Sheriff’s Department in 2009. Lieberman retired in March 2025.

Lieberman told LAist that in the months before his retirement, he was “burning time,” using up sick days, vacation and holidays.

When asked about sleeping at work, he said he thinks it’s not uncommon for people to occasionally sleep at work.

“It’s the reality of being human,” Lieberman said in a phone call. “When you’re sitting in a chair, I might close my eyes, doesn’t mean I’m asleep. I think that’s true for a lot of people.”

The firestorm 

The day before the 2025 fires sparked, the National Weather Service upgraded its warning. The upcoming fire weather conditions were “life-threatening,” forecasters said, and they warned of a “particularly dangerous situation,” or PDS — a term reserved for only the most worrisome weather.

The county’s Emergency Operations Center in East L.A. was officially activated by Tuesday, Jan. 7.

Vaquero was set to be on duty from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Lieberman would take over for the next 12 hours.

Vaquero said he arrived early Jan. 7 — about 6 a.m. At about 10:30 a.m., the WatchDuty app — a volunteer-led disaster monitoring service that emergency managers have also come to rely on for eyes in the field — was surfacing reports of a fire near Pacific Palisades. Soon after, Vaquero said, he and his team had a call with the city of L.A. and started to prepare evacuation alerts for nearby unincorporated areas. McGowan headed to the incident command post on the Westside.

Throughout the day, Vaquero said, he managed the OEM staffers on duty — including those whose job was to ensure areas in the county’s jurisdiction got timely evacuation warnings and orders.

At 6:23 p.m., the first reports of the Eaton Fire starting began to ping in Watch Duty.

Vaquero sent an agency representative to the newly established incident command post at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, he said. The county would be in charge of alerts for the Eaton Fire because the fire started in an unincorporated area.

Vaquero said he stayed past the end of his shift, helping with the transition to night shift staff. Vaquero said he watched as a night shift staffer gave a crash course on how to use the new alerts software to the person Vaquero had assigned, with leadership’s approval, to alerts and warnings. The first advisory alert for the Eaton Fire was sent to eastern parts of Altadena, as well as parts of Pasadena, a little before 7:30 p.m.

Vaquero told LAist that at that point he passed off his duties to Lieberman and headed home around 8 p.m. He said he was exhausted.

The next day

Vaquero woke up before dawn on Jan. 8 and immediately turned on the news.

“ I'm like, ‘Oh shit, this is the doomsday scenario,’” Vaquero told LAist in a recent interview.

He rushed to work, arriving a little before 5:30 a.m. and went to find Lieberman for a briefing.

“ And the first thing he says is, ‘I don't know why we're activated. Nothing's even happening,’” Vaquero recalled to LAist. “So I went off. ... I was just absolutely pissed.”

In the whistleblower complaint, Vaquero wrote that Lieberman “was making inflammatory comments like ‘why are we even activated!?’ for all in the room to hear.”

By his own account, Vaquero said, a colleague had to calm Vaquero down because he was visibly upset with Lieberman.

In his whistleblower complaint, Vaquero said he then talked to the other night shift staffers, who told him Lieberman “was sleeping in his office.” A person in the office early the morning of Jan. 8 also told LAist they witnessed Lieberman asleep in his office before the end of his shift.

Lieberman told LAist that as director of the Emergency Operations Center, he would not have been involved in the details of every alert and warning and denied that he would sleep during an active emergency.

“If [L.A. County Fire] sent OEM something about the alerts, that would’ve been handled immediately,” Lieberman said. “I seriously doubt that anything that was sent to the EOC wasn’t acted upon.”

In its statements to LAist, the county reiterated that the Emergency Operations Center director is not typically directly involved in sending or approving alerts and warnings.

During the night shift, evacuation warnings and orders were sent to areas of Altadena east of Lake Avenue between 7:55 and 9 p.m.

Meanwhile, around 11 p.m., radio and 911 dispatch calls indicated that the fire was moving in multiple directions, including westward, according to a timeline produced by the Fire Safety Research Institute at the California governor’s request. Multiple reports of fires west of Lake Avenue were reported just before midnight.

Notably, the McChrystal after action report’s timeline differs, citing the first reports of flames west of Lake at 2:18 a.m. on Jan. 8.

The county sent the first evacuation order to West Altadena at 3:25 a.m. An evacuation warning, alerting people to prepare to leave, was never sent.

According to the L.A. County statement to LAist, both McGowan and Luke were at the Emergency Operations Center at “various times” throughout that night, “including during the consequential period when emergency notifications for west Altadena were issued during the Eaton Fire.”

“Steve Lieberman was actively working throughout the times Director McGowan and Deputy Director Luke saw him and there aren’t observations that Steve Lieberman’s performance impacted the execution of alert and warning,” the county wrote.

People work in the L.A. County Emergency Operations Center in December 2024 during the Franklin Fire.

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L.A. County Office of Emergency Management

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Ultimately, the decision to order evacuations, and the responsibility to communicate that need, rested with the L.A. County Fire Department that night. The county statement said that incident command notified the Emergency Operations Center to send an evacuation order to West Altadena at 3 a.m., about 25 minutes before the alert officially went out. The 25-minute turnaround time was noted in the McChrystal report as an improvement from previous emergencies. L.A. County Fire did not respond to a detailed list of questions from LAist, citing ongoing independent investigations into the response.

According to the McChrystal after action report, L.A. County firefighters recalled suggesting to incident command around midnight that an evacuation alert be sent to the foothill areas of Altadena and neighboring communities, as far west as La Cañada Flintridge, but staff at the command post did not recall this request.

The report pointed to the overall chaos of multiple fires and extreme conditions, as well as general concern at this time of the catastrophic impacts if the fire overcame the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, home to materials that could cause “toxic fumes if ignited.”

“No official form or documentation was used by LACoFD [the L.A. County Fire Department], LASD [the Sheriff’s Department] or OEM to jointly and formally record which zones should receive evacuation orders or warnings, the time the decision was made, or the time the zones were communicated to OEM staff at the EOC,” the report states.

All but one of the 19 Eaton Fire deaths occurred west of Lake Avenue.

The morning of Jan. 8, Vaquero said he angrily told McGowan about his experience with Lieberman. “I immediately requested that Kevin [McGowan] remove Steve [Lieberman] from the incident operations and this change took place,” Vaquero wrote in his whistleblower complaint.

The county’s statement to LAist attributed the change to another factor. It said Lieberman “was in the process of retiring and requested leave based on accrued leave and compensatory time, which was approved in connection with his retirement.”

The aftermath

Vaquero said he believed the details he laid out in his complaint should have been a part of the McChrystal after action report. He told LAist he shared the same details in his interviews with the McChrystal group.

He also said OEM could have acted sooner and been better prepared.

It’s not the first time OEM’s response to a disaster has come under criticism. In 2023, OEM’s own internal after action report about the response to Tropical Storm Hilary identified "opportunities for improvement.” That report, which LAist reviewed, documented confusing and inconsistent information sharing from management to staff, a lack of “established and codified processes” for activating the county’s Emergency Operations Center, lack of staff training on alert and other systems, and that leadership should have a roster of personnel with credentials “to allow for better staffing decisions.”

Since the McChrystal report was released in late September 2025, OEM has publicly acknowledged these “systemic weaknesses.”

“OEM faces challenges related to limited organizational autonomy, fragmented authority, resource constraints, and insufficient staffing and technology for a jurisdiction as large and complex as Los Angeles County, while facing catastrophic disasters,” the county’s statement to LAist said.

Since the fires, the office said it has restructured staff and is working to increase personnel, as well as expand training and joint exercises with the fire and sheriff’s department, and modernize its technology systems.

The Office of Emergency Management has been reorganized, officials said. County supervisors are also considering a proposal to add 44 positions to the office, increasing its size to about 80, as part of the first phase of a three-year expansion plan in response to the recommendations in the McChrystal Group after action report.

Nearly a third of the budget has historically come from federal grants, the Washington Post has reported, and that “pot is shrinking” under the Trump administration, said the county Chief Executive Office’s acting chief, Joe Nicchitta, at a recent budget hearing. So the county is largely looking to fulfill the McChrystal Group’s recommendations to expand the office via limited local funding.

Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents Altadena and some of the most disaster-prone unincorporated areas of the county, said, among other things, the county has shifted the OEM to report directly to the Chief Executive Office, instead of another branch within that office.

“Since last year’s fires, my priority has been strengthening our emergency management system so it is better equipped to respond to increasingly complex disasters,” Barger wrote in a statement. “I believe this change will help streamline decision-making, strengthen accountability, and position OEM to evolve in a way that meets the 21st century emergency management needs of Los Angeles County.”

Helen Chavez, a spokesperson for Barger, added that the supervisor “is not aware of Mr. Lieberman. Personnel performance management is a duty that falls to county department leadership and typically does not rise to the attention of the Board of Supervisors.”

Vaquero says he worries that if he doesn't speak out, nothing will change at the Office of Emergency Management.

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Carlin Stiehl

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Why speak out now?

Vaquero was born in Lancaster and raised in Santa Clarita, he said, and today lives there with his family in a hillside neighborhood near wildfire-prone wilderness.

“ We could easily be Altadena next,” Vaquero said.

He said that speaking publicly could put his career and reputation at risk, but he’s worried nothing will change if he doesn’t sound the alarm.

“My kids, I always teach them the most important thing is to have integrity, to be kind and to do the right thing,” Vaquero told LAist. “And if I'm not going to live by that example, then I'm just a hypocrite. And I hate hypocrites.”

Long Beach resident Kelsey Wise has been asking for a speed bump on her street for months. After multiple close calls on Orange Avenue just north of Seventh Street, she spent hours building a PowerPoint to lobby her City Council member to get behind the idea. Her efforts earned her a meeting with the Long Beach Public Works Department, which manages street safety improvements. Soon, she’ll make her case to them as well.

Few people go to the lengths Wise did, but she’s far from the only person with frustrations about how difficult it is to make local streets safer.

With fatal traffic collisions at their highest point in more than a decade, that dissatisfaction bubbled over last week at a Long Beach City Council meeting, where members and residents took turns voicing their irritation.

Council members told city staff to come up with a plan to speed up safety measures, but it raised the question for us: What’s taking so long to begin with?

We put those questions to City Traffic Engineer Paul Van Dyk. Here’s what we found out.

What happens when residents ask for a new safety measure?

When the city receives a request to evaluate a street for a potential measure to influence traffic behavior, Long Beach sends out city staff to observe drivers along that section of roadway.

In general, a street must clear three specific benchmarks for the city to begin designing a measure to impact traffic behavior. More than 26% of drivers must be observed speeding on a certain stretch of roadway, that stretch must have at least one crash per year and the street must average more than 2,000 vehicles per day.

There are outliers to these rules. For example, Sixth Street between Almond and Orange avenues averages 790 cars per day on less than a tenth of a mile. Fewer than 2% of drivers speed on that stretch, but it’s seen a half dozen collisions recently. City traffic engineers are lowering the speed limit on that stretch from 25 mph to 15 mph to limit future crashes.

Asking for a change is no guarantee that something will happen quickly.

Public Works is dealing with a backlog of requests. It received 220 over the past two years and still has 40 it needs to evaluate, and new requests are rolling in, with this year already outpacing prior ones.

And of the 180 requests Public Works finished evaluating, only 17 were selected for new traffic-calming measures. Once a road is selected for a traffic-calming measure, it takes anywhere from two to four months to install, according to a Jan. 20 presentation from Public Works.

Residents can submit a request for a traffic evaluation here.

The state has strict rules on where and when a stop sign can be installed. To meet the threshold, an intersection must have five or more reported crashes in 12 months. Furthermore, it has to be clear that a stop sign would directly prevent similar crashes from occurring, and there must be a minimum vehicle and pedestrian volume through the area.

Stop Signs

Stop signs are effective when “there’s an equilibrium” in traffic flow, said Van Dyk. If someone pulls up to a four-way stop sign and there’s never anybody at any of the three other directions, it makes the driver less likely to obey the sign, he said.

“The hard part is not putting up a sign,” Van Dyk said. “It’s convincing people to actually listen to the sign. To follow what the sign says and make it make sense to them.”

Speed Bumps

Speed bumps are different than speed humps. Speed humps can include speed tables and raised crosswalks, while speed bumps are concrete mounds that require drivers to slow down to cross.

“Typically, speed bumps are most effective if we’re seeing significant amounts of people going at high speed,” Van Dyk said.

If people typically travel between 25 and 30 mph down a street, speed bumps “really aren’t going to make a noticeable difference in behavior,” he said.

They are reserved for areas where people typically travel at 35 to 40 mph, Van Dyk said. However, even if a traffic engineer deems it a viable solution to slow speeding traffic, Long Beach requires a petition signed by neighbors to install them. The approval percentage ranges from 50-75%, depending on the type of speed hump or bump the neighborhood is seeking.

New left-turn signals

From January 2023 through the end of 2025, Public Works received 133 resident requests to check the timing of existing traffic signals. When that happens, Public Works sends out a traffic engineer to “test all the different detectors around the light to make sure that they are accurately detecting when a car goes by.”

They check to make sure the magnetic sensors underground are working properly and observe traffic during rush hour to make sure the light is “flushing the left turn pocket every time,” Van Dyk said.

Van Dyk acknowledged the danger of trying to make a left turn at a green light instead of a green arrow. “All of the liability is on the driver in making sure that I’m doing this safely,” he said.

Vehicles make their way along Long Beach Boulevard as they pass a speed limit sign at Seventh Street in Long Beach on Thursday, December 1, 2022. Photo by Thomas R. Cordova. Long Beach is in the process of adding more left-turn arrow lights, but “traffic signals are probably one of the most expensive projects that the city undertakes” as far as traffic-calming measures, Van Dyk said.

Adding a signal at one intersection costs “more than half a million” dollars once you factor in the costs of building the light and making sure everything is hooked up properly underground without disturbing the existing utility lines, Van Dyk said.

“It’s a lot of steel, it’s a lot of engineering,” he said.

Low-cost fixes include changing the signal timing “to give pedestrians a head start” when crossing the street.

Crosswalks

Long Beach plans to install 39 new crosswalks throughout the city, including 25 with a button that activates rectangular rapid flashing beacons for pedestrians crossing the road.

Among those to be installed: two will go along Seventh Street, five will be installed on Anaheim Street and three will be installed on Atlantic Avenue.

Those with specialty beacons are placed on marked crosswalks that see elevated levels of speeding cars, traffic volume or crashes. They are also installed in areas that don’t have a marked crosswalk, but are on roadways where pedestrian deaths and injuries are common.

How do speed cameras and limits fit into this?

This fall, speeding drivers caught at 18 spots throughout Long Beach will begin receiving fines from automatic cameras. The program is part of a state pilot in seven cities that mandates the ticket revenue pay for new traffic-calming measures.

Proceeds from the fines “can’t be spent on enforcement, general police or fixing potholes. It’s spent on neighborhood traffic calming,” said City Manager Tom Modica.

In January, the City Council also approved lowering speed limits on 77 streets throughout the city. A majority of those reductions restored the state standard of 25 mph on streets with three or fewer lanes that had speed limits of 30 to 35 mph.

In nearly two dozen locations, speed limits were dropped to 15-20 mph to match “existing driver behavior. A dozen streets had speed limits dropped to 25 mph within 500 feet of a park playground.

Until 2021, state law limited a city’s ability to set its own speed limits. This round of speed reductions is the second the city has undertaken since the law changed. The city conducts speed surveys on its streets “on a rotating multiyear schedule” and adjusts speed limits based on that data.

To request a speed survey on your street, email goactivelb@longbeach.gov. You can also request a free yard sign saying “20 is plenty” in English or Spanish here.