The Brief

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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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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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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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.”

Addendum : Updated statement from the county

County officials sent LAist the following statement late Wednesday, March 11:

“Steve Lieberman had no responsibility for receiving or issuing evacuation alerts and warnings. Emergency alerts and warnings are issued based on decisions made by Unified Command in the field and relayed directly to the Office of Emergency Management Alert and Warning unit. It is unacceptable for any OEM employee in the midst of an emergency response to fall asleep. However, to be absolutely clear, Mr. Lieberman had no impact on the timing of alerts and warnings to Altadena. To take these allegations and suggest that this led to the tragic deaths of 19 Altadena residents is patently false and seems intended to recklessly escalate residents’ concerns. Nonetheless, as per County policy, we have forwarded all of Nick Vaquero’s claims for investigation. As these claims were submitted as part of a confidential personnel matter, we are unable to comment further.”

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The worries before the World Cup were many. There were the visa wait times, the ticket prices, anxieties over hotel rooms and public transit, and countless battles between FIFA and local organizing committees.

Now, with the group stage done and the knockout round set to begin Sunday, it is time to declare: The North American World Cup has been a success.

No doubt there were visitors who were turned away, would-be attendees who could not afford tickets, and hotels and local businesses who feel the promised bump in tourism hasn't materialized.

But overall, the stadiums have been full, even for matchups that seemed lackluster on paper: nearly 70,000 people packed into stadiums to see games like Cape Verde-Saudi Arabia, Algeria-Jordan and Bosnia and Herzegovina-Qatar. And for headliner events, the environment has been top-tier, like at the U.S.-Australia game in Seattle and in Kansas City for Lionel Messi's historic hat trick for Argentina.

Visitors and hosts alike have been dazzled by the scenes. Kansas City was swarmed with tens of thousands of Dutch fans for a pre-game march. Boston was besieged by the Tartan Army. Australian fans seized their chance to come to the closer North American coast, where they packed the stands and belted "Waltzing Matilda."

And of course, the games have been terrific. Now, the knockout round is set, with some blockbusters shaping up for the Round of 16 and beyond.

Read on for more takeaways from the tournament so far:

France forward Kylian Mbappé (r) runs with the ball past Iraq's midfielder Zaid Ismael during a World Cup Group I match in Philadelphia on June 22.

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France is the best team in the tournament

Some pre-tournament favorites have looked good, like Argentina. Others have underwhelmed, like Portugal. Some have mixed their good and bad moments, like England, Germany and Brazil.

But one team has consistently looked a cut above the rest: France. Les Bleus had supposedly drawn one of the toughest groups at this World Cup, with dark horses Senegal and Norway competing with them for the top spot. After a sluggish first half to start their opener against Senegal, France turned on the gas and has cruised ever since. They've made their World Cup look downright easy, with at least three goals in each game.

No path to the World Cup Final is easy, and France would certainly arrive battle-tested if they get there, with a potential later matchups in the Round of 16 against Germany, in the quarterfinal against the Netherlands or Morocco and in a possible semifinal against Spain. But their group stage performance leaves no doubt that they should be the favorites to win all of them, and more.

The U.S. is better than expected, though its path to the quarterfinals isn't easy

Is this finally the World Cup run to remember for the USMNT? The American men were once the plucky underdogs of international soccer, always willing to run for 90 minutes and gut out a tough, gritty game. Those days seemed to fade for a decade or two after their 2002 quarterfinal run.

U.S. players celebrate during their World Cup group match against Paraguay.

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Suddenly, the results are good, the vibes are even better, and the expectations are growing by the minute. For the first time ever, the starting lineup mostly features players with key roles on teams in top European leagues. And these boys can score: The six goals they scored in their first two group stage games were twice as many as they netted across four games in the 2022 World Cup.

The third group stage match against Turkey, in which U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino gave most of his usual starters a rest and his backups a chance to play, cooled their momentum somewhat with a 3-2 loss.

Still, a Round of 32 matchup against Bosnia and Herzegovina should be winnable. That would be their third win of the tournament so far, the most ever by any U.S. men's team at a World Cup. And a potential Round of 16 matchup against Belgium (or Senegal) is tougher but should be competitive, too. A quarterfinal in Los Angeles, even if it's a loss against Spain, would be an epic and fitting result for this team on home soil.

This will be an epic Golden Boot race

The stars are delivering in this World Cup. Argentina's GOAT Lionel Messi has six goals. France's twin titans Kylian Mbappé and Ousmane Dembélé are hot on his heels with four goals apiece. The imposing 6-foot-5 Norwegian megastar Erling Haaland has four goals despite resting on the bench for Norway's third game. Brazil's Vinícius Júnior also has four.

Argentina forward Lionel Messi celebrates scoring his team's third goal during a group match against Jordan on Saturday. It was his sixth goal of the tournament, and record 19th overall World Cup goal.

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Messi should have plenty more opportunities as Argentina drew perhaps the easiest route to the quarterfinal, with a Round of 32 match against Cape Verde, followed by a possible Round of 16 game against the winner of Egypt versus Australia. Plenty of other stars have two or three goals and what could be a deep run ahead, like England's Harry Kane and Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo. Watch this space.

The expansion to 48 was criticized, but it has been a lot of fun

The biggest criticism of expansion was that there would be no real peril for top-quality teams in the group stage, both because there would be more lopsided group stage matchups and because eight third-place teams advance. That has mostly borne out.

The highest-ranked World Cup team that failed to qualify for the knockout stage was Uruguay, which came in ranked No. 16. By contrast, the 2022 tournament had four teams ranked higher and were eliminated in the group stage — Belgium (No. 2), Denmark (No. 10), Germany (No. 11) and Mexico (No. 13). The new Round of 32 will have to do some of that work of adding surprise and peril to the big favorites.

The expanded format has also given us moments and teams to remember, like Cape Verde — which would probably not have reached the World Cup under the old format — taking the pre-tournament favorites Spain to a scoreless draw in their opening match. It's a thrill for fans of teams that rarely have a shot, like Scotland or Haiti or the Democratic Republic of Congo, to have a chance to see their nation on this kind of stage. In fact, nine (of 10) African countries advanced to the knockout round.

Plus, seven teams have reached the knockout stage for the first time in their country's history: Cape Verde, Egypt, Ivory Coast, South Africa, Congo, Canada and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sure, they won't be favorites to make a deep run. But the games should be electric.
Copyright 2026 NPR

A supporter of Cape Verde's national football team reacts as she watches the 2026 World Cup group match against Saudi Arabia on Friday.

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The American Film Institute is out with this bold proclamation: Mel Brooks’ film Blazing Saddles is the funniest movie of all time.

The pick may be contentious for some, but the 1974 film has been widely acclaimed for its raunchy and subversive humor in service of skewering racial prejudices.

Younger viewers might be shocked at the number of racial slurs included in the film (by some counts there are dozens). According to NPR reporting, Brooks was concerned about the use of racial epithets in the film. But as NPR’s film critic Bob Mondello wrote in 2024, “... his co-screenwriter, Richard Pryor, insisted he use it — and use it often — consciously putting it [in] the mouths of evil or unthinking characters, so that star Cleavon Little could comically mock or demolish them.”

The American Film Institute says it’s bestowing this recognition in honor of Mel Brooks' birthday. The director of comedy classics, including Young Frankenstein, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and Spaceballs turns 100 today.

The Palos Verdes Peninsula has received a lot of attention in recent years because of accelerated land movement, but one landslide in the area has been a draw for decades because of its dystopian state with fractured streets.

Nearly 100 years ago, residents of San Pedro’s Point Fermin neighborhood had a dream of living by the ocean, but the cliffs became their undoing. A landslide slowly ripped Point Fermin apart. This southernmost part of Los Angeles County was given a new nickname to fit its troubled state: Sunken City.

Today, it’s full of torn-up terrain, graffiti and remnants of old homes, rising out of the ground like fossils. It’s still considered dangerous, but its mysterious remnants make for a compelling backdrop — you may have seen it in movies like the ash-spreading scene in The Big Lebowski. But soon, you could visit it too. The city of L.A. is working on reopening a section — possibly in the next year.

How the landslide started

Point Fermin is where you can get a spectacular view of the water. On a clear day, you can see down the Pacific Ocean as far as Catalina Island.

That scenery is why people wanted to live on its bluff. In the 1920s, Los Angeles was on the cusp of a population boom, so naturally, building homes on the coastline made sense. Developer George Peck took that idea and built an upscale neighborhood with bungalows.

An Easter Sunday service on a Point Fermin hilltop, taken between 1920 and 1939.

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It lasted for a few years, but in the months leading up to January 1929, some strange coincidences began to happen. Pipes were breaking more than expected, but it wasn’t clear why.

Then, a waterline broke under an inn and a crack appeared. At first, it was brushed off as a “simple landslide” with minimal danger, but it eventually became known as an uncontrollable “act of God.”

The crack formed near the cliffside back around to Pacific Avenue and Paseo del Mar. Part of it even caved in, forming a deep, 10-foot-long hole in front of homes.

F.L. Ransome, a geology professor at Caltech, reportedly told L.A.’s city engineer that land had slid up to 8 inches, ripping open utility pipes and pulling apart building foundations.

He warned that the area was no longer suitable for large structures and that water in the area may accelerate the movement, producing “disastrous changes on the surface.”

A section of the Point Fermin landslide in 1932.

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At that point, the slide, which covered 5 acres, was mostly blamed on ground weakness and wave erosion. The city filled cracks as they happened and explored ways to protect the area, including with eminent domain. Property owners in 55 lots petitioned the city to buy them out.

But by September, the situation became so risky that geologists recommended the area be condemned. L.A. officials told residents to leave or risk “their own peril.”

A slow march to the sea

For the next several years, Point Fermin was in limbo. The ground still moved but mostly at a snail’s pace. The keyword is mostly. The area was plagued by huge cracks that tore apart the once-thriving community — some 40 feet wide.

Multiple incidents caused the landslide to move faster, including heavy rains. Numbers varied, but it was reported that the grounds shifted more than 30 feet seaward and 30 feet down by 1941.

Heavy rains loosened 200 tons of earth at Point Fermin in San Pedro, as shown Feb. 17, 1941.

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This destroyed the area. The city demolished homes that were too damaged to live in, and others were relocated to other parts of L.A. Officials eventually bought up nearly all of the impacted land to turn it into a park. But with the heightened risk, much of the area was blocked off to the public for years.

Around this period, landslides happened in other parts of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, like the Portuguese Bend. The issue became such a problem that insurance companies refused to insure L.A. homes for landslide damage.

Then came the big drop. After a 5.0 earthquake in 1969, a new “mammoth, crescent-shaped fissure” appeared that damaged three homes along Paseo del Mar and dropped another 200 feet down into the rocks. Still, some residents refused to leave.

“I’ve studied the trench and I’d be willing to bet the house never goes, even if the backyard did,” said resident Larry Penhall in 1970.

In total, the slip eventually grew to 10.5 acres, according to a geological study in 1987, with 40,000 feet of that ending up in the Pacific Ocean. It took down at least two homes and a lot of infrastructure, including roads, utility pipes and rail lines.

Sunken City today

The peninsula is generally still prone to landslides, but the ground is more stable in Point Fermin, or what’s now called Sunken City. It wasn’t the most dangerous landslide we’ve ever seen — no one died at the time, but visitors have in the years since, those who’ve wandered too far toward the cliff edge. It’s become a local legend because of how it looks today.

An aerial view of Sunken City on Oct. 12, 2025.

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Google Eath/Airbus

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If you venture to Sunken City, there’s still a neighborhood nearby, but the landslide area itself is closed off. For those bold enough to sneak in, you risk getting caught for trespassing. Visitors have even had to be rescued over the years.

The terrain resembles nothing of its affluent past, but that may change soon. Earlier this year, the City Council approved funding for environmental monitoring and safety upgrades for the upper area.

Sophie Gilchrist, communications director for Councilmember Tim McOsker, said part of the plan includes the design of a new fence that requires coastal development permits.

“While we don’t have a precise timeline for reopening, we have informed the local neighbors that it may take another full year,” she said. “The project is actively moving forward.”

Manuel Valle, 84, jumped on his bike and rode through his Boyle Heights neighborhood despite the protests from his worried children. The air was smoky, for the fifth day in a row; he pushed through fits of coughing to pass out 50 N95 masks to his neighbors.

The same day, officials told residents the air was not dangerous and the smoke was clearing out. Valle didn’t agree.

“This is a state emergency,” he said. “Treat it like a state emergency.”

Fire had ignited at a facility, operated by the company Lineage, which stores food before it’s shipped off to restaurants and grocery stores. Lineage uses the toxic refrigerant anhydrous ammonia, which posed a health risk in the early hours of the fire.

Weeks earlier and miles away, the Orange County Fire Authority issued an evacuation order affecting 50,000 Garden Grove residents when fire officials realized a tank at an aerospace manufacturing facility could either explode or leak large amounts of a toxic chemical into the air.

In both cases, records show state and local regulators knew the facilities; they had inspected them, approved plans and resolved violations. How they used their authority is now a central question for neighbors in the surrounding areas seeking accountability.

A lawmaker has proposed some reforms to chemical policy. But prosecuting companies for failing to follow environmental laws is difficult, and how far cities may go to protect residents isn’t clear.

“I don’t know what the local government is waiting for — for a tragedy to occur or something more serious or what … on top of what is already going on,” said Miguel Ocegueda Castillo, who lives near the Lineage warehouse.

A young boy watches firefighters battle a blaze at a cold storage facility in the Boyle Heights neighborhood June 22.

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Ted Soqui

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CalMatters

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Years of oversight, unresolved risks

Companies face layers of federal and state oversight designed to help prevent hazardous chemicals from escaping into surrounding neighborhoods. But records show that these two facilities, one in Orange County and one in Los Angeles County, had accumulated violations over years and continued operating.

In 2021 the South Coast Air Quality Management District issued GKN Aerospace multiple notices of violation, including for failing to maintain the required emissions records and operating some equipment without proper permits. The company later signed a settlement with air regulators and paid more than $900,000 — without admitting liability.

During the emergency, authorities gave residents conflicting information about whether the chemical methyl methacrylate had leaked.

“When you go home, you can feel safe. There was no contamination. … There was no leak,” Regina Chinsio-Kwong, Orange County Public Health Officer told residents during one press briefing, even though early reports characterized the incident as a leak.

Days later, Orange County health officials walked back that statement.

In Boyle Heights, the Lineage facility stores more than 12,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The chemical is a refrigerant that if inhaled, can cause severe eye and respiratory irritation, shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting and, at high concentrations, death.

In the early hours of the fire June 17, the Los Angeles Fire Department told residents to shelter in place because of the risk of the chemical being released into the air. The order was lifted, and then imposed again.

Lineage said in a statement that it “proactively took steps to pump out the ammonia and transport it offsite” and that no measurable ammonia concentrations had been recorded in the community since the fire began.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told residents the air was not dangerous. But on the sixth day of the fire, an air monitor detected a hazardous spike of air pollutants.

Federal records show that the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health inspected Lineage in Boyle Heights the day the fire started. It wasn’t their first visit.

In 2020, Cal OSHA opened an investigation into the facility for violations of multiple safety standards. After Lineage lodged an administrative appeal, regulators fined the company $2,250 for violations related to process safety and respiratory protection.

Rebecca Liu Morales, a spokesperson for Lineage, said the company stores food, not hazardous materials, and said it was not responsible for the fire. She said the fire started when a contractor was working on the rooftop solar array, which provided power to the city.

“The health and safety of our employees and the communities we serve is our top priority,” she added. “Our industry is heavily regulated and inspected, with over 200 routine regulatory inspections by various agencies conducted of our North American operations alone between 2024 and 2025.”

The Los Angeles Fire Department is investigating the cause of the June 17 fire. The city department of Building and Safety is also investigating, and the workplace safety investigation remains open.

Luck, rather than strong protections, has saved residents from catastrophe in both Orange and Los Angeles counties, said Jane Williams, executive director of California Communities Against Toxics.

Industrial infrastructure has grown near residential communities, Williams said. But state and local oversight of hazardous substances has not kept up.

“I don’t think anybody really thought: Wait, we have these warehouses, a warehouse here, a warehouse there, and what happens if there’s an earthquake and we lose containment at four anhydrous ammonia tanks in one square mile at the same time?” Williams said.

Filling in regulatory gaps 

Federal and California laws are designed to protect communities from accidental releases, when a spill or an explosion or a leak releases hazardous chemicals into air, soil or waterways.

The federal Clean Air Act’s Risk Management Program requires companies handling dangerous chemicals in significant amounts to develop preventive and emergency plans for just these situations — and file those plans with regulators. California goes even further: Its risk management program sets stricter thresholds and more demanding requirements than federal law — meaning California law holds facilities to a higher standard, and state regulators have more tools and more authority to act than their federal counterparts.

But critics say even California’s stronger standards have significant gaps that state officials have allowed to persist.

Reactive chemicals, such as the methyl methacrylate stored at GKN, often fall outside of both the federal and state accidental release programs. In Garden Grove, regulators required no risk management plan.

Anhydrous ammonia is a different story. It’s a listed chemical, one of the core hazards state and federal programs aim to regulate. Federal and state environmental protection officials confirmed Lineage in Boyle Heights is part of both programs.

Local agencies called Certified Unified Program Agencies are the layer of oversight closest to the ground. In California, they’re responsible for knowing what hazardous chemicals companies store where, and in what quantities. Local agencies must inspect those facilities regularly and keep emergency plans on file, so that a fire department showing up to a warehouse blaze should already know what’s inside.

Neither local agency has fully disclosed its oversight of these facilities. In Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Fire Department did not answer questions about its oversight of Lineage Logistics, despite repeated requests by CalMatters.

In Garden Grove, records obtained by CalMatters reveal that the Orange County Healthcare Agency has inspected GKN more than a dozen times over the last decade and issued violations related to hazardous waste regulations that were later corrected. The facility had emergency plans that were approved in May, weeks before the incident, records show.

State Sen. Tom Umberg, a Democrat whose district includes Garden Grove, introduced Senate Bill 883 in the weeks after the GKN episode. It would require the state Office of Emergency Services to maintain a statewide inventory of facilities storing reactive chemicals, add methyl methacrylate to the state’s risk management program, require CalEnviroScreen tool to track facilities that pose an explosion risk and update current environmental review law to ensure that storage sites that have a risk of explosion aren’t exempt from review.

“We must learn from this incident, address the gaps it exposed, and take steps to ensure it never happens again,” Umberg said, in a statement announcing the legislation.

The bill is moving through Assembly policy committees.

The GKN emergency prompted a federal response. The Federal Bureau of Investigation searched the facility on June 10 — but experts say determining whether anyone committed a crime is often difficult after an industrial accident.

An aerial view of downtown Los Angeles with smoke from the smoldering storage facility in Boyle Heights on June 22.

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Ted Soqui

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CalMatters

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Legal remedies are a challenge

Residents want accountability, but the legal bar to hold companies for environmental crimes is high.

Criminal prosecution requires more than proving a rule was broken. Prosecutors need evidence of deliberate deceptions — falsifying reports, hiding violations, deceiving regulators.

The federal government goes after “those that are lying, cheating and stealing,” said Ethan Ware, an attorney who represents companies investigated for environmental crimes. “There’s more to it than just the environmental violation. There’s some effort to deceive, or to hide, or to get enriched by lying on documents.”

That bar gets even higher when no specific rule is broken — when prosecutors argue a company has a general duty to keep people safe. “What the government is saying is you have complied with all of these hundreds and thousands of regulatory requirements, but we still think you pose a risk to the community,” Ware said. “That’s a hard sell to a jury, to a judge, to anybody.”

A federal criminal investigation into an industrial accident is unusual — and the Garden Grove investigation may not lead to charges. The broader federal enforcement landscape has also changed.

A 2026 report by the Environmental Integrity Project found that the number of civil lawsuits filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in cases referred by the EPA dropped to just 16 in President Donald Trump’s first year in office — 76% less than in the first year of the Biden administration. Only 12% of facilities with air pollution violations received any kind of enforcement action from EPA or state agencies in the last year.

That federal shift matters for Lineage, which has faced at least three civil enforcement actions in recent years, but none that resulted in criminal charges.

Last year, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the company $37,500 for three violations at a Riverside facility, two related to its handling of hazardous materials and emergency plans.

Also last year, the company paid $3,420 to settle alleged violations at a Vernon facility, including that the company didn’t correct a critical safety system deficiency it identified during a 2021 audit.

In 2023, the EPA fined Lineage more than $172,000 for alleged violations of the federal Risk Management Program at an Iowa facility. The EPA said in a news release that the company “failed to correctly document the worst-case scenario in its risk analysis, failed to comply with accidental release prevention requirements, and failed to document emergency response coordination with local authorities.”

In 2024, a Lineage warehouse in Washington burned for 60 days. Hundreds of neighbors to the warehouse reported health problems, and some residents filed civil claims. But the company has not faced criminal charges.

The limits of local power  

Weeks after an evacuation sent tens of thousands of people from their homes in Garden Grove, GKN Aerospace came to a City Council meeting. The company had not spoken publicly since the evacuation.

Resident Rodrigo Garay held up a thin red cross blanket.

“This is what I used for the whole week to sleep on,” he said/ “And I’m sure that you slept on really nice beds with your $260,000-a-year salary.”

He and other residents wanted to know why the city wasn’t doing more to ban GKN and other facilities like it from their city.

Miles away in Boyle Heights, Lineage neighbors are also raising concerns about their schools, homes and playgrounds being so close to warehouses and other industrial facilities.

“We shouldn’t wait until after this disaster for Boyle Heights residents to know what was in the facility in their backyard,” said local City Council member Ysabel Jurado.

The frustration in both cities points to a hard truth. The people with the most immediate stake, both residents and city officials, may have the least power after a facility is already operating.

Water is sprayed on a tank that overheated at GKN Aerospace in Garden Grove on May 22.

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Ethan Swope

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AP

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City officials can update their general plans and rezone property to keep facilities they consider a threat to public health and safety away from their residents.

But the Constitution limits how far that authority extends to facilities that are already there. Businesses have a general right to not be over-regulated out of existence, said David Waite, an attorney who specializes in local land use law.

“Where it gets tricky is we have existing uses — such as the GKN facility — that were duly permitted and duly authorized under the existing zoning on that property,” Waite said. “That rezoning effort cannot just simply bar that existing use without running afoul of constitutional takings arguments.”

Cities can try revoking a facility’s permit by proving it is a public nuisance. But that requires showing an ongoing threat, not a one-time event, Waite said.

Garden Grove and Boyle Heights are largely communities of color. Garden Grove ranks among the top 20% of the state’s most environmentally burdened communities, according to CalEnviroScreen; Boyle Heights is in the top 10%.

In Garden Grove, the city’s response has been cautious.

Garden Grove spokesperson Johnathan Garcia said the city is “exploring with its attorneys and engaging in the deliberative process regarding its options in consideration of its authority under the constitution, federal and state laws.”

“What is the point of bemoaning that you don’t have more local control if you don’t use the authority you do have in times like this?” Mai Nguyen Do, a research and policy manager for the Harbor Institute for Immigrant and Economic Justice, asked the council.

In Los Angeles, Jurado is calling for an investigation into what went wrong at the Lineage facility and introduced a package of motions, including calls for a public report on the cause of the fire and the facility’s compliance history, increased public transportation service in the area to reduce the amount of time residents are outdoors and funding for neighborhood councils to distribute air purifiers and other protective equipment.

“When a major industrial fire happens here, it’s not viewed as an isolated incident. Residents see it as part of a larger pattern,” Jurado said. “That’s why I have said from the beginning that this is not just a fire response issue. It’s a public health issue, it’s an accountability issue, and it’s an environmental justice issue.”

This story was produced in collaboration with Boyle Heights Beat, a founding community newsroom of The LA Local, a nonprofit covering Los Angeles communities.

Laura Anaya-Morga, Isaac Ceja, Claudia Koerner, Alejandra Molina, Isaiah Murtaugh, Jessica Perez, Steve Saldivar and Nathan Solis contributed to this story.

Alejandro Lazo contributed to this story.