Topline:
Planet Books, the 4,000-square-foot warehouse of used tomes, toys, life-size posters and delicate antiquities, has found a new home.
Why it matters: The beloved Signal Hill bookstore was told it needed to vacate by the end of April, risking either closure or confining their goods to storage.
Why now: And now, it needs to move.
Read on ... to learn about the herculean process to move 150 tons of books and magazines — and how you could help.
Lifesize cutouts of Deputy Ringo Starr next to the defunct bathroom, Freddy Krueger standing over the entrance, delicate china guarded by the Incredible Hulk‚ and 150 tons of books and magazines.
It is moving day at Planet Books, the 4,000-square-foot warehouse of used tomes, toys, life-size posters and delicate antiquities, and all of it must leave.
Store owner James Rappaport and manager Argyl Houser have spent the first half of the month packing, consolidating and bidding goodbye to the warehouse they have worked in since 2020. They must have it all out by the end of the month.
Around them, boxes line the narrow aisles, taped tight and labeled by genre. Some glass cases are emptied of their knick-knacks, some walls naked of their posters. Public radio, KJazz 88.1, remains on as usual, though Rappaport said the queue has been nonstop rock and blues.
“We had like three solid days of Eric Clapton,” he said with a smile.
It’s a swift change from months ago, when the two were told they needed to vacate by the end of April, risking either closure or confining their goods to storage as they struggled to find a new home.
“I couldn’t find anything within a thirty-mile radius that was under two dollars [per square foot],” Rappaport said.
Approaching the store’s 30th anniversary, the two are set to celebrate in a new location, a former furniture store turned sound studio at 1819 Redondo Ave. — the second time the bookstore has moved since it opened in 1998.
The new place is larger — by about 600 square feet — and twice the cost to rent. It’ll also be a year-long sublease before they can lease it on their own. But it’s a needed move, one that offers the opportunity to organize, consolidate and rebuild their vision of a bookstore that the two have talked about for years but never had the momentum to act on.
Planet Books is looking for volunteers to help with this move. If you’re reading this and jazzed about the idea, James and Argyle said to either call the store at (562) 985-3154 or simply stop by at 1855 Freeman Ave. any day this month between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.
“It’s a huge amount of work, but it’s also an opportunity to make the store just the way we wanted … an opportunity to really make the store shine,” Houser said.
The two plan to downsize a tenth of their stock through donations to nearby schools, shelters and prisons. They’re giving away half of their hardcover mysteries, at least half of their small paperbacks and looking to downsize their knick-knacks. Rappaport is also selling his treasured vinyl collection.
“It’s been in the back for years, and I’ve finally decided I’ve got to start selling my things, getting too old to save everything,” Rappaport said.
The new store, they envision, will have art books in the front; specialty vintage will rest in the back left and leatherbound classics will have the windowed area to the right. Their rarest tomes, currently spread across five locations in the store, will be consolidated and put in a glass display.
They want better seating and wider aisles, envisioning a trendy establishment where customers can sit at tables and couches and sip cappuccinos or listen to live music — preferably jazz or blues — and enjoy poetry readings or book signings.
It’s a bittersweet move and a goodbye to a long chapter of the bookstore’s history. But with change comes the relief of certainty, a fresh start and finally, two new toilets that actually work.
Topline:
The Los Angeles Police Department is planning to deploy thousands of officers a day during the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and it estimates it will cost $732 million to do so.
How much are we talking: Added to the department’s typical staffing across the city, estimated personnel costs for the two-month period hosting the Games soar to more than $1.15 billion. That’s more than half of LAPD’s 2026-2027 budget.
Why it matters: A budget memo submitted to the Los Angeles City Council in May offers a rare glimpse into security plans for the Olympics, which are being overseen by the U.S. Secret Service. It also casts light on the immense cost of policing the Games as concerns grow about what Olympics expenses may fall on the city of Los Angeles.
Read on… for a breakdown on the estimated costs and who will pay.
The Los Angeles Police Department plans to deploy thousands of officers a day during the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and it estimates it will cost $732 million to do so.
Added to the department’s typical staffing across the city, estimated personnel costs for the two-month period hosting the Games soar to more than $1.15 billion. That’s more than half LAPD’s 2026-2027 budget.
Police Chief Jim McDonnell laid out the department’s staffing model — and its whopping price tag — in a budget memo submitted to the Los Angeles City Council’s Budget and Finance Committee in May. The document offers a rare glimpse into security plans for the Olympics, which are being overseen by the U.S. Secret Service.
It also casts light on the immense cost of policing the Games as concerns grow over what Olympics expenses may fall on the city of Los Angeles, which is the financial backstop for the Games.
At its peak, LAPD expects to deploy 6,703 officers a day across the city during the Olympics, according to the May budget memo outlining the department’s policing plans.
To do this, the department is planning to dedicate more than half its officers — 4,713 people — to the Olympics and Paralympics over a more than two month period in the summer of 2028.
But that won’t cover all the personnel LAPD says it needs. Accounting for days off, the department expects around two-thirds of its Olympics staff will need to come from outside law enforcement agencies.
The department’s estimated cost of housing, feeding and paying those officers from outside law enforcement agencies is $354 million, close to half of LAPD’s anticipated Olympics price tag. The state of California will negotiate contracts with those external agencies, according to a law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this month.
These plans for the city of L.A. are just one piece of police spending for the Games, which will span the region. Law enforcement officials are expecting that staffing the Olympics and Paralympics will require between 24,000 and 30,000 officers in total, LAPD Commander Mario Mota told a state Senate committee in June.
He said as many as 16,000 officers a day could be deployed across the entire Los Angeles region during the Summer Games.
Marci Rand, a spokesperson for the Secret Service, told LAist in an email that staffing estimates are still being determined, as are security perimeters around venues.
“The U.S. Secret Service is working closely with our law enforcement partners including the LAPD on developing a robust and thorough security plan for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games,” Rand said in an email.
The single biggest expense in LAPD’s Olympics and Paralympics cost estimates is for overtime. In total, the department is anticipating a $375.4 million price tag for officer overtime alone.
The department estimates that it will pay its own force overtime for about a third of its Games deployment, and that all outside law enforcement being brought in will make overtime rates. According to the budget memo, “outside agencies do not provide regular-time staffing for an event of this scale; they backfill on overtime.”
LAPD estimates the officer overtime rate to be $131.94 an hour.
The department’s media team declined LAist’s request for an interview on its budget and staffing projections.
Olympics and Paralympics security plans rely on public funding. Both the Olympics organizing committee LA28 and the city of L.A. are counting on the federal government to cover the cost of deploying thousands of additional police for the Games.
Last year, Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" allocated $1 billion for Olympics security costs. But exactly how that money will be distributed has yet to be determined. There’s no guarantee that the money will cover all security expenses.
In the May budget memo, LAPD staff noted that it’s possible that federal funds will only cover LAPD overtime, not base salaries.
That potentially could leave the city to pay for more than $300 million in regular staffing costs for LAPD officers assigned to work the Olympics and Paralympics.
California is similarly relying on federal dollars to cover the cost of officers from other agencies who will temporarily come to L.A. If it doesn’t, the Office of Emergency Services estimates that contracting costs could be more than $1 billion, according to a fiscal analysis included in the bill tasking California with executing Olympic law enforcement contracts.
It’s not clear what authorities expect the total security price tag for the 2028 Games will be, but recent Olympics suggest expenses could exceed $1 billion.
A French auditing body found that security costs for the 2024 Paris Olympics were €2 billion euros, Reuters reported last year. Those auditors criticized organizers for not anticipating the high price of security.
“The sums spent are not in themselves excessive given the political choice to stage the Games in the heart of Europe’s densest city, but it is abnormal not to anticipate the cost of such an event,” Pierre Moscovici, the head of that auditing body, told reporters, as reported by Reuters.
Paul Krekorian, the former L.A. City Council President who now leads the city's major events office, told LAist in an email that Los Angeles is learning from recent host cities including Paris when it comes to security plans.
Krekorian said in a statement provided by the mayor’s office that those experiences demonstrate “a need to increase public safety coordination and staffing to manage increased tourism, transportation demands, and regional security needs.”
As local officials await details on staffing plans and security perimeters, the Los Angeles City Council is already facing the limits of federal support.
LAPD wants the city to finance 300 new vehicles to temporarily expand the Police Department's fleet during the summer of 2028 — a request it does not expect to be reimbursed by the federal government.
The council’s budget and finance committee kicked that decision down the road, after multiple members expressed skepticism about the possible $30 million expense. But the City Council has already approved spending $13 million on another LAPD request to procure 107 non-patrol vehicles.
Topline:
Justin Bieber joined several members of his band for an impromptu performance at MacArthur Park on Tuesday.
Why now: On Tuesday, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman pointed to Bieber’s performance as a sign of progress at the park. Bieber performing an impromptu set at the park is “a testament to the progress we are achieving to take back the park from drug dealers and enliven it for families,” Hochman wrote on X. Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez’s office, however, pointed to a longer history of work at the park in response to Bieber’s visit. “We’re excited to see Justin Bieber enjoying MacArthur Park, just as countless other Angelenos do every day, experiencing what nearly four years of sustained investment and community partnership have made possible,” said Naomi Roochnik, a spokesperson for Hernandez.
The backstory: A source close to Bieber told E! News that he visited the park to distribute gift cards and other resources to unhoused people. A spokesperson for the singer could not be immediately reached for comment.
MacArthur Park got an unexpected guest Tuesday: Justin Bieber, who joined several members of his band for an impromptu performance.
Social media videos show Bieber, 32, sitting on the grass, playing percussion and singing as people gather around. He performed several songs to a handful of people, including his 2025 hit “Yukon,” according to videos from the impromptu performance.
A source close to Bieber told E! News that he visited the park to distribute gift cards and other resources to unhoused people. A spokesperson for the singer could not be immediately reached for comment.
Bieber, who headlined Coachella earlier this year, played a stripped-down performance with his band. Some people in social media video walked by the set, while others recorded the set.
His surprise appearance adds a different kind of attention typically focused on MacArthur Park. In the last several months city officials, law enforcement and community groups have taken different approaches to addressing conditions at the park and activating the space.
For Brenda Aguilera, director of the Community Transformation Collective, the reaction to Bieber’s visit is part of a larger conversation about the changes at the park.
Her organization has been working with a neighborhood volunteer group of about 60 MacArthur Park-area residents since March. The group includes parents, caregivers and vendors who meet regularly to identify neighborhood priorities and work with city agencies and community organizations.
Residents involved with the group have reported greater awareness of available services and said they feel safer in the park, Aguilera said. But she added that the people who live in and around the park should be at the center of any assessment of how conditions are changing.
“They’re not in the park. They don’t live in those neighborhoods, so they have to speak to the local community members to hear about their perspectives,” Aguilera said, referring to elected officials.
On Tuesday, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli pointed to Bieber’s performance as a sign of progress at the park.
Bieber performing an impromptu set at the park is “a testament to the progress we are achieving to take back the park from drug dealers and enliven it for families,” Hochman wrote on X.
Essayli wrote: “Bieber in MacArthur Park. That’s progress. Amazing what can happen when criminals and drug dealers are removed from public spaces.”
Over the summer, the Los Angeles Police Department and federal agents carried out a multi-phase operation targeting drug activity in and around the park, including a June operation that resulted in 13 arrests. Hochman also held a picnic at the park over Labor Day weekend after saying he would return with his family if he believed it was safe enough.
Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez’s office, however, pointed to a longer history of work at the park in response to Bieber’s visit.
“We’re excited to see Justin Bieber enjoying MacArthur Park, just as countless other Angelenos do every day, experiencing what nearly four years of sustained investment and community partnership have made possible,” said Naomi Roochnik, a spokesperson for Hernandez.
The councilmember has invested more than $27 million in the park, including Peace Ambassadors, round-the-clock clean teams, overdose response, street medicine, youth programming, arts and culture and infrastructure improvements, according to Hernandez’s office.
“MacArthur Park’s progress belongs to the residents, workers, promotoras, outreach teams, and community organizations who do this critical, lifesaving work every single day,” Roochnik said.
Community Transformation Collective’s promotoras are among those working directly with residents, Aguilera said, helping connect them with services and providing what she described as “warm handoffs” to organizations that can offer support.
For Aguilera, that community perspective matters when officials assess what is happening at the park.
“It’s not up to us or these elected officials that are in these government bodies to just speak on behalf of our communities,” she said. “They could speak about their efforts, but they can’t speak about the entire perspective. It’s really those that live there that could share that perspective.”
The post You better Beliebe it. Justin Bieber played a set at MacArthur Park appeared first on LA Local.
Topline:
Michael Angel Alvarez, a former city contractor, made headlines earlier this year, when he was arrested while working as a peace ambassador for the nonprofit Healing Urban Barrios in MacArthur Park. LAist spoke with him after his recent release from custody.
Justice or politics? After being arrested in May, Alvarez says he believes prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A. brought their case for political reasons — not for public safety.
A spokesperson from the office did not comment on claims that the case was politically motivated, but said they are considering options to appeal the judge’s decision to dismiss the case.
“Alvarez is a convicted murderer and a documented member of the 18th Street gang,” a spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement. “He has no legitimate role serving as a ‘peace ambassador’ in a public park or receiving taxpayer-funded compensation.”
What’s next: A separate case on the same charges, filed by the L.A. County District Attorney’s office in Superior Court before federal prosecutors filed their case, has a preliminary hearing set for Oct. 27. A spokesperson for the District Attorney’s office did not comment on whether they intend to continue pursuing the case after the federal case was dismissed.
Now that the federal case against him has been dismissed, Alvarez told LAist he hopes to continue working as a community violence intervention worker.
Read on . . . for more about why the case against Alvarez was dismissed.
Michael Angel Alvarez made headlines earlier this year when he was arrested while working as a peace ambassador for the nonprofit Healing Urban Barrios in MacArthur Park. Federal prosecutors alleged Alvarez was “leading a violent street gang, while claiming to be a gang interventionist for the City.”
But they didn’t charge him for violent or gang-related crimes.
He spent three months in custody under a different charge: illegally possessing body armor. He pleaded not guilty, and a trial date was set.
Alvarez was released from custody this month, nearly a week after a federal judge dismissed his case on Sept. 9, ruling that a juvenile court finding that Alvarez killed a man while a minor could not be counted as a violent felony conviction that would make owning body armor illegal.
Alvarez spoke with LAist after his recent release, saying he believes the case against him was politically motivated and shows a lack of understanding about what it takes to intervene with gang members to reduce violence in communities. He acknowledged gang affiliation, but said he was not a gang leader and had not committed any crimes since being released from prison in 2024.
Federal prosecutors told LAist in a statement they are looking into options to appeal a federal judge’s decision to dismiss the recent indictment against Alvarez. No one from the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A. has responded to LAist’s requests for comment about Alvarez’s assertion that the case was politically motivated.
Before the federal prosecutors filed their case against Alvarez, the L.A. County District Attorney’s office filed a separate case against him on May 20 in Los Angeles Superior Court also based on possessing body armor. A preliminary hearing in that case is set for Oct. 27. He pleaded not guilty. A spokesperson for the District Attorney’s office did not comment on whether they intend to continue pursuing the case now that the federal case has been dismissed.
Alvarez was a minor when he was found guilty of a gang-related murder in 2002. At 15 years old he was charged and tried as an adult. He was convicted of first-degree murder for shooting and killing a man in Pico-Union. He was sentenced to 50 years to life. But after a change in state law increased the age at which minors could be sentenced as adults to 16, Alvarez’s case was sent back to juvenile court and he was released in 2024. At that point, he had served about 24 years.
On Sept. 9, U.S. District Judge Anne Hwang found that same law that led to Alvarez’s release also bars the court from considering him to have been convicted of the killing, because juvenile court determinations are not criminal convictions. Without a violent felony conviction, Alvarez is not prevented from owning body armor by state or federal law. She dismissed the federal prosecutors’ case against him.
In an interview with LAist last week after his release, Alvarez said he thinks federal prosecutors wanted to score political points by targeting community violence intervention work, not because he posed any risk to public safety.
“ I almost got killed as a result of trying to change the community for the best,” said Alvarez, who showed photos to LAist of what he described as stab wounds in his abdomen and arms that were taken in February 2025. He said that assault took place while he was working in MacArthur Park. “ And for whatever reason you had the individuals who are part of the Republican Party who went after me because of the Democrats, the people that I worked for.”
Alvarez’s former employer, Healing Urban Barrios, has not responded to LAist’s requests for comment since the case was dismissed. Christina Navarro, the nonprofit’s founder and executive director, said in a statement to LAist back in May of this year that Alvarez was innocent until proven guilty and that the organization was continuing its work despite the allegations against him.
“We are not stepping back,” Navarro wrote in the statement. “We are doubling down.”
Healing Urban Barrios was contracted to work at the park by Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter. Her office says community violence intervention workers have been effective for decades in interrupting cycles of violence in ways traditional law enforcement cannot.
Naomi Roochnik, a spokesperson for Hernandez, told LAist in May they were not aware of allegations against Alvarez before his arrest and that peace ambassadors are employed and supervised by community-based organizations.
Alvarez was removed from the peace ambassador program earlier that same month, she said.
“We will always take misconduct seriously and hold our partners to high standards, but we will not allow an individual case, or efforts to politicize it, to undermine proven community-based public safety work,” Roochnik said Friday in an emailed statement.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, who heads the office that brought the case, has been critical of the city’s gang intervention program.
“The hardworking tax payers of Los Angeles deserve better than to see their money shelled out to a convicted gang murderer,” Essayli wrote on social media on May 29, the day his office announced the charge against Alvarez.
Essayli was appointed by the Trump administration to lead the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A. and was previously a Republican member of the California State Assembly, where he represented part of Riverside County.
Spokespersons for the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A. have continued to speak out against Alvarez since the body armor case was dismissed. In statements sent to LAist via email by spokespeople Ciaran McEvoy and Shawn Lewis, the department called Alvarez ”a convicted murderer and a documented member of the 18th Street gang” who was indicted by grand jury on the body armor charges.
“These facts are not in dispute. It is unfortunate that he now benefits from a California law that effectively allows him to erase his murder conviction, something his victim cannot do.”
Adding: “He has no legitimate role serving as a ‘peace ambassador’ in a public park or receiving taxpayer-funded compensation.”
The department said they are currently considering their options to appeal what they called “a narrow technical legal issue.”
Most people can legally own and wear body armor in the United States — it’s typically worn as a vest, either made of durable fibers like Kevlar or with steel or ceramic inserts designed to stop bullets. It becomes illegal to own or possess body armor under federal and state law if a person has been convicted of a violent felony.
But U.S. District Judge Hwang agreed with Alvarez that he did not have a violent felony conviction on his record.
Alvarez admits he shot and killed 22-year-old Mauricio Miguel Masis on Aug. 17, 2000.
He told LAist he was 15 and in a gang when he and a 13-year-old friend, who was not gang-affiliated, were approached by what he described as three older gang members. Masis was one of the men, he said.
“ They're already in their mid-20s and tried to kill both of us,” Alvarez said. He told LAist he shot Masis, but claims it was to defend his friend and himself.
Convicted as an adult in 2002, he could have spent his entire life in prison after being found guilty.
“ I was 17 years old when I was walking Supermax,” he told LAist, “level four maximum security prison.”
In 2018, Senate Bill 1391 passed in the California legislature, to only allow minors 16 years and older to be considered for adult court.
The new law gave Alvarez a way out of prison, allowing his case to be resentenced in 2024.
By then he’d served about 24 years. Because of his age at the time of the killing, under the change in the law his case was sent back to juvenile court where his adult conviction was set aside and he was declared a ward of the court — or under its supervision and control.
Alvarez was released from prison and put on probation for two years.
The following year he was also sentenced to two years of probation for a separate felony offense in November 2023 that was considered non-violent — possessing a weapon while in custody.
Alvarez acknowledged having the weapon while he was in prison, and told LAist that most people had hidden weapons there, often as a deterrent from being attacked.
“Of course I had a weapon,” he said. “You would have one too if you were there. You're trying to do everything in your power to survive.”
In early 2025, Alvarez began working for Healing Urban Barrios as a peace ambassador.
“ They wanted individuals who had the respect, I suppose, of the streets [and] in prison,” he told LAist.
Alvarez said gang members are more willing to talk with someone from their own background than with police officers or city officials, and he said he was able to speak to them to avoid violence and other safety issues around MacArthur Park.
“There's hundreds — if not thousands — of gang members who flow through that area due to the fact that a lot of them are addicts now,“ Alvarez said.
He told LAist he believed the peace ambassadors in the area had made a difference in reducing the number of people using drugs, fighting and lighting fires in the park since he started working there in 2025.
“ There used to be a lot of fights,” he said. “ We're able to talk to the guys right there and be like, ‘Look, work something out with each other.’"
Alvarez showed LAist photos of people he said he had given CPR while on the job to prevent them from dying of drug overdoses and a woman he said he identified to authorities as a missing person and helped get to safety.
Federal agents arrested Alvarez in May, after LAPD officers found two body armor plates in his car during a traffic stop earlier that month.
Alvarez told law enforcement officers after his arrest that the plates were for an art project, court documents show, and his lawyer argued in court that Alvarez did not have a vest to wear the armor in.
Prosecutors argued in court documents that he could have used the armor plates without a vest, and that he may have had a vest for the plates elsewhere.
Alvarez told LAist he was planning to use his laser engravers to write poetry on the plates and his cousin was going to paint them with graffiti to get the attention of the youth he served.
“With youth, especially youth that are in gangs, you gotta show them some different type of art,” he said. “ It would've hit them hard, you know?”
The U.S. Attorney’s office charged Alvarez with possessing body armor. But they made additional allegations against him apart from the charges, which they have not proven in court.
For instance, prosecutors claimed in court documents that Alvarez was “leading a violent street gang, while claiming to be a gang interventionist for the City,” and that they were investigating him for additional crimes that would carry “great sentencing exposure.”
Prosecutors alleged in court documents that members of the 18th Street gang described him as a leader of the gang in recorded jailhouse phone calls. Alvarez claimed the way the prosecutors described the conversations wasn’t accurate. He told LAist he was never a gang leader and, instead, was using the respect he had with the 18th Street gang to prevent further violence.
No one from the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A. responded to LAist’s questions about whether they intend to pursue other charges.
LAist asked Alvarez to clarify whether he was an active member during our interview last week.
“ When you're a gang member, for the most part, you're always a gang member, you know?” He said, “There's two types of ‘actives.’ There's active where you're actively involved in the violence and all that stuff, but there's also being active when you're actively involved in your community, and that's what I've been doing.”
If you have a tip, you can reach me on Signal. My username is jrynning.56.
Alvarez said he hopes to continue working in gang violence reduction programs now that the federal case against him has been dismissed.
“I know that what we did was good,” he said, recalling how parents of children he had worked with around MacArthur Park reached out to thank him while he was in federal custody as his recent case was ongoing.
“It'd be nice to have the support all the way around and not have, especially, people who are pushing politics,” Alvarez told LAist.
Councilmember Hernandez’ office and Healing Urban Barrios have not responded to questions about whether they would consider allowing Alvarez to return to his position as a peace ambassador.
Topline:
The 2025 Los Angeles firestorms led California and L.A. County to consider adopting “disaster registries,” an emergency management strategy used around the country for assisting people who might require additional help in emergencies due to their age, disability or other health conditions.
Why it matters: Of the 31 people who died in the Eaton and Palisades fires, 27 of them were older or adults with disabilities.
Why now: L.A. County supervisors authorized a study about creating a disaster registry last year, but later put the idea on pause.
The backstory: California's Office of Emergency Services argues against registries. Its reasoning: They can easily get out of date, and they could give a false sense of security to people, who may assume assistance is guaranteed when it is not.
Read on ... to learn about how Florida and one California county use registries.
After the Palisades and Eaton firestorms in January 2025, one story captured how Los Angeles County’s emergency management system seemed to have failed. Anthony Mitchell Sr., an 80-year-old man who used both a prosthetic and a wheelchair, and his 35-year-old son, Justin, who had cerebral palsy, died in their Altadena home waiting for evacuation assistance.
Anthony Mitchell had called 911 twice, identifying himself and his son as disabled, and was assured help was coming.
Of the 31 people killed in the fires, 27 were over 65, and at least six had mobility issues, according to news reports.
The tragedy led California and L.A. County to consider adopting “disaster registries,” an emergency management strategy used around the country for assisting people who might require additional help in emergencies due to their age, disability or other health conditions.
The California Commission on Aging issued a report in November that noted evacuation centers lacked data on older and disabled residents who would need assistance. That led to a shortage of equipment and expertise to address the specialized needs of those residents. The commission recommended that the state consider implementing a statewide registry.
Even before the commission’s recommendation, Los Angeles County supervisors had directed its Aging and Disabilities Department to study the feasibility of a registry.
But neither initiative has moved forward.
“We have not seen much movement on exploring a disaster registry,” said Patrick Smith, the state Commission on Aging’s legislative director.
The Los Angeles feasibility study was “paused” last year while the county reviewed its emergency operations with the McChrystal Group, said Liz Odendahl, a spokesperson for Supervisor Janice Hahn, who co-sponsored the resolution authorizing the study.
Some advocacy groups in California and the state Office of Emergency Services have argued against registries, Smith said. In fact, OES’ official guidance on registries is that “jurisdictions should not use them.”
Registries typically are voluntary, and registrants are responsible for keeping their information up to date. Because of that, they are unreliable sources of information, which is one reason some emergency managers and many advocates for older and disabled people oppose them.
They also point out that registries could give a false sense of security to people, who may assume assistance is guaranteed when it is not.
“This false assumption is dangerous and can lead to an overall decrease in personal disaster preparedness,” the California Office of Emergency Services says on its website.
Registries are hard to keep current, the office notes, and the personal information people provide may be challenging to safeguard.
With data showing older people far more likely to die in natural disasters — and climate change making disasters more frequent and severe — several states have taken the opposite approach, establishing registries to better assist older adults and people with disabilities in emergencies.
Florida’s statewide Special Needs Registry is often cited as a model because it connects the state’s Health Department with emergency management in all 67 counties. Florida also requires its counties to establish shelters for people with special medical needs.
Delaware, New Jersey, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Texas and Utah also have statewide registries, as do many municipal emergency offices across the country.
In California, three of 58 counties have registries — Mono, Siskiyou and Butte.
Butte County’s registry was in place in 2018, when the Camp Fire killed 85 people, 67 of whom were seniors. Emergency managers can’t say how many or if any of the older adults who died in that fire were on the registry.
But they say the registry remains a useful tool.
“If we didn’t have the list, we wouldn’t have had any idea at all who needed extra assistance evacuating,” said Butte County Emergency Manager Angie Mannel, who was a 911 dispatcher during the Camp Fire.
Older adults, like many Americans, are not prepared for disasters. A 2023 AARP survey found that under one-third of older adults have a comprehensive plan for natural disasters, and only 10% have opted into apps or text notifications that alert people to emergencies.
“You can’t just throw a bunch of information out there and expect everyone to be able to act on it,” said Lindsay Peterson, a gerontology researcher at the University of South Florida. “Some people just can’t.”
Her research has shown that technology can be a barrier for older adults, especially those living independently but with limited technological skills and income.
While acknowledging that “registries are controversial,” Peterson said state and local governments must find ways to ensure the most vulnerable older adults will be protected.
That’s what Florida set out to do with its Special Needs Registry. But it does not guarantee emergency assistance, which the Health Department notes when people register. Still, the Florida Division of Emergency Management advises older adults needing this assistance to register, because registries can be useful planning tools and may save lives, even if they are incomplete.
Each of Florida’s county emergency management offices decides how it will use the registries to provide assistance. Seminole County, in eastern Florida, offers transportation assistance to registrants who request it. Three days before a tropical storm or hurricane is expected, the county Office of Emergency Management calls registrants about the approaching storm and advises them to evacuate. They must agree to leave at that time in order to receive transportation, said Steven Lerner, division manager.
“We’re like Enterprise; we’ll pick you up,” he said. The county uses a fleet that includes school buses and ADA-compliant vans.
Lerner’s main concern about Seminole’s registry of 1,700 people is who is not on it. He focuses his outreach efforts on new residents who may never have experienced a hurricane season, and those aging at home who may overestimate their ability to evacuate themselves.
In Lee County on Florida’s western coast, the Office of Emergency Management used public transportation to help evacuate people when Hurricane Ian hit in 2022. More than half of Lee County’s 800,000 residents were ordered to evacuate a day before the hurricane made landfall. Many were forced to weather the storm at home or in shelters, as 10 inches of rain inundated areas, winds gusted up to 140 mph and storm surge reached 15 feet. The storm killed 149 Floridians, including 72 Lee County residents. Most of the fatalities were people over 65.
County spokesperson Betsy Clayton wouldn’t say how many registrants emergency crews helped to evacuate during Hurricane Ian. But she said the county has assisted about 1,000 registrants in each major storm Florida has experienced in the past two decades, providing paratransit and ambulance services.
In California’s Butte County, emergency managers believe the registry will save lives if a disaster on par with the Camp Fire strikes again.
After igniting on Nov. 8, 2018, the Camp Fire grew rapidly, overwhelming the county’s emergency management plans and destroying its communication systems. It incinerated Paradise, a town of 27,000 people, in four hours.
The California auditor’s 2019 after-action review of the county’s emergency plans recommended Butte use registry data in evacuation planning, so emergency responders know who will need help before a disaster.
Tiffany Rowe manages Butte’s Special Needs Awareness Program, which notifies registered people of emergencies and evacuation orders and assists in evacuating them if needed.
The voluntary registry pinpoints who will require assistance in particular evacuation zones and what they’ll need. Most warnings are automated, but if the emergency is expected to affect 10 or fewer registrants, Rowe calls them herself.
After the pandemic and the busy fire seasons of 2022 and 2024, the number of Butte County registrants increased by over 50%. Today, around 2,200 older adults and people with disabilities are registered.
“Being a disaster-prone county,” said Mannel, Butte’s emergency manager, “our perspective is always focused on the safety of our citizens.”
Timothy Lane is a writer with the Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley Journalism School and covered this story through a grant from The SCAN Foundation.
