Listen • 30:10

Listen • 30:10

Despite three 911 calls, how did two men with disabilities die in their home during the Eaton Fire?

West Altadena residents Anthony Mitchell Sr. and his son Justin Mitchell were stuck at home when the Eaton Fire erupted Jan. 7. Both had disabilities, and to evacuate, they needed help. Mitchell Sr. and family members called 911 multiple times as the fire spread. But first responders didn't make it in time to evacuate the father and son. Seven months after the devastating Eaton and Palisades fires, guest host Jill Replogle looks back with LAist climate and environment reporter Erin Stone. They discuss the timeline of the 911 calls and how emergency planning continues to leave people with disabilities behind in Los Angeles.

By the time Anthony Mitchell Sr. called 911 for the first time at 6:03 a.m. on Jan. 8, sparks were flying into his west Altadena backyard.

“There’s two disabled people in the house,” he told the dispatcher, who then asked for his exact address.

The Eaton Fire erupted about 12 hours earlier, and driven by extreme Santa Ana winds, it was burning a path through neighborhoods of 100-year-old homes and tight-knit, multigenerational communities.

“Sparks are flying in my backyard right now,” Anthony Mitchell Sr. told the dispatcher, his voice calm.

“And is the backyard on fire or just sparked?” the dispatcher replied.

“It's sparks right now, but it's getting close,” he said.

“All right. We'll give them that information. They should be there as soon as possible,” the dispatcher told him.

“OK. Thank you, 'cause I'm scared with me and my son being disabled,” Anthony Mitchell Sr. replied.

“OK, they're on their way,” the dispatcher said.

The Eaton Fire’s toll

At least 30 people died in January’s unprecedented fires — most of them older and many with disabilities.

Hajime White stands outside her father's home in Altadena.

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Courtesy Hajime White

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LAist recently obtained 911 calls from Anthony Mitchell Sr., who had a disability and lived with his disabled son in the 100 block of Terrace Street. The calls — released by the L.A. County Fire Department nearly five months after LAist requested them — shed light on why and how inadequate emergency planning, training and coordination leaves people with disabilities behind when disaster strikes.

The calls are being published with the permission of the Mitchell family.

Anthony Mitchell Sr. was no stranger to fire. The 68-year-old had lived in Altadena and Pasadena for most of his life, and he’d always give his family updates about the weather.

“He would call and let me know whether it was fire. He’d let me know if it was raining,” said daughter Hajime White, who lives in Arkansas.

But flames never got far enough down the mountains to threaten the home where Anthony Mitchell Sr. lived with his two adult sons, Justin and Jordan, who was the primary caretaker for his brother and father.

Justin Mitchell, 35, had cerebral palsy and was paraplegic, and required two or three people to help him get out of bed. Anthony Mitchell Sr. used a wheelchair, walker or cane after losing a leg to diabetes.

On the night of Jan. 7, Jordan Mitchell was in the hospital after a fall.

“Frankly, that’s my worst nightmare, that I wouldn’t be around them and something would happen and someone would get hurt,” Jordan Mitchell told KCAL News a week after the fire.

When the Eaton Fire started about 6:20 that evening, Anthony Mitchell Sr. initially wasn’t concerned. But in just a few hours, winds that gusted up to 80 mph spread embers deep into west Altadena.

Evacuation orders for west Altadena came about eight hours after the alerts for people living east of Lake Avenue, according to reporting by the Los Angeles Times. Evacuation warnings were never sent before that order.

But before those orders came at 3:25 a.m. Jan. 8, Anthony Mitchell Sr. — and many others west of Lake Avenue — feared the situation was getting out of control.

Anthony Mitchell Sr. called son Anthony Mitchell Jr., who lives in Bakersfield, at about 11 p.m. Jan. 7 to say that he’d called other family members to help get him and Justin Mitchell out. Anthony Mitchell Jr. told LAist that law enforcement stopped those family members from entering the area.

The second 911 call

At 6:14 a.m. Jan. 8, 11 minutes after he first called 911, Anthony Mitchell Sr. called again.

“ My house is on fire,” he says, repeating his address, his tone still calm. “Two disabled people in the house.”

“I can hear crackling now. I can see the flames,” Anthony Mitchell Sr. tells the dispatcher.

“OK. And you're in the residence right now?” the dispatcher asks.

“Yes, we are,” he replies. “Myself and my disabled son. We're both disabled.”

As the dispatcher typed notes, Anthony Mitchell Sr. softly says, “Hurry, please.”

After confirming the address again, the dispatcher says, “OK, sir, we'll get out there as soon as we can.”

Gaps in disaster support for people with disabilities

Experts LAist spoke with said the Mitchells’ case highlights long-running challenges and stalled efforts to improve support for people with disabilities during disasters. Still, they emphasized that even the best planning can’t save everyone.

“ No matter how strong the emergency plan is, chances of help arriving quickly in a major catastrophic event are not good,” said June Isaacson Kailes, a Los Angeles-based disability policy consultant.

It’s why early notification to people with disabilities is key, she said. And in the Eaton Fire, those alerts came too late for west Altadena, which is where all but one of the 18 deaths in the fire occurred.

People with disabilities require more time to evacuate. They may have specialized medical equipment, and they frequently need to be taken somewhere that can support their needs — designated evacuation shelters, such as a high school gym or a community center, sometimes cannot.

And once disaster strikes, 911 lines quickly get overwhelmed.

Governments need to be honest about, and better communicate these gaps, Isaacson Kailes said.

“ I know the politicians don't like that because they say, well, people will lose confidence,” Isaacson Kailes said. “Well, that's right, but maybe they'll be more realistic in what they can expect.”

Creating a separate emergency number specifically for people with disabilities to call, and training 911 dispatchers to direct disabled callers to specific resources, are some solutions, said Dawn Skaggs,  chief program officer at the World Institute on Disability, which assisted families in need alongside the San Gabriel Pomona Regional Center during the Eaton Fire.

“Right now, there is basically no training,” Skaggs said.

The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department oversees evacuations during disasters here, according to the county’s evacuation and transportation emergency plan. The county Fire Department is tasked with handling medical evacuations in partnership with other departments, according to that document.

The agencies coordinate with transit and paratransit agencies that have vehicles, can assist with mass evacuations and can carry people who require medical equipment.

Bus drivers with the city of Pasadena, for example, rushed in to help evacuate senior living facilities during the Eaton Fire.

Residents of an Altadena senior center are evacuated as the Eaton Fire approaches on Jan. 7.

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Ethan Swope

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Associated Press

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In unincorporated Altadena, LA Metro is the liaison for mass evacuations, according to the county’s plan.

Although Metro did deploy vehicles, they were not used.

“Due to the very large embers blowing and creating unsafe conditions for the drivers, we were not able to reach the exact area requested and had to stage at a safe distance,” said Maya Pogoda, a spokesperson for the agency, in an email to LAist.

Buses are generally used for evacuating multifamily buildings and nursing homes, not individuals at their homes, experts told LAist.

That’s where paratransit agencies, such as AccessLA, can come in. AccessLA is the county’s main paratransit agency and has a fleet of more than 1,800 vehicles that can transport three to four people with wheelchairs and other medical equipment. All of their drivers are trained in emergency response.

“We can’t do mass evacuations,  but we have a niche that can transport disabled people with wheelchairs and walkers, service animals,” said Mike Greenwood, the agency’s chief operating officer.

Greenwood said AccessLA was ready to respond to the fires by 4 a.m. Jan. 8. But despite Greenwood personally checking in with the county’s lead response agencies, AccessLA was not called to assist, by the county or the city, he said.

“I was a little surprised,” Greenwood said.

He said AccessLA drivers have been called in by the city of L.A. to help evacuate people in past fires, including the 2017 Woolsey Fire.

“ I would hope that we're gonna have a seat in the county [emergency operation center] at some point in time so that we can help the disabled community and better be able to evacuate those people down the road,” Greenwood said.

The county’s office of emergency management declined to answer why AccessLA wasn’t called.

“Multiple after-action reviews currently underway are taking a comprehensive approach to these topics; we await completion and release of the final report before commenting,” the county’s Coordinated Joint Information Center Center wrote in a statement to LAist.

Businesses along Lake Avenue were destroyed by the Eaton Fire in Altadena. Warnings for residents west of Lake came much later than those for people east of the Altadena and Pasadena thoroughfare.

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Zoe Meyers

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AFP via Getty Images

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A third 911 call

A few minutes after Anthony Mitchell Sr. got off the phone with 911 the second time, he called his daughter in Arkansas. He told White that he’d called twice to be evacuated. He quickly had to get off the phone, telling her he could see the fire in the yard.

At 6:35 a.m., another family member calls 911.

“The backyard's on fire, and they've called twice and nobody's coming and getting them out,” she says, her voice urgent.

“Do you know about how long ago they called?” the dispatcher asks.

“He said he called a few minutes ago, I mean, about 15 minutes ago. And he said he called twice, and they said they were on their way, but nobody's here,” she replies.

“Yeah, we have a lot of calls in that area,” the dispatcher says. “Let me just make sure we have the call.”

“They can't get out of the house,” she says, desperation in her voice.

“Yeah, I understand,” the dispatcher says, confirming they did receive the earlier 911 call and that crews had been notified.

She again emphasized the deteriorating conditions.

“Embers everywhere, and the backyard’s on fire,” she says.

“Got it. We'll notify them of that information,” the dispatcher replies.

LAist reviewed radio traffic from that night and found dispatchers discussing the Mitchells’ address after the third 911 call.

At 6:38 a.m., a dispatcher shared the address to deployed crews, saying the Mitchells were “unable to get out, sees flames nearby.”

Help arrived too late.

The Mitchells' home after the Eaton Fire.

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Courtesy Hajime White

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At about 8:30 a.m., Anthony Mitchell Jr. got a call from his brother Jordan. When first responders arrived, Jordan Mitchell told his brother, the house had burned down.

His father and brother were inside, dead.

The cause of death was smoke inhalation and burns, the L.A. County medical examiner later determined.

The L.A. County fire and sheriff’s departments declined to answer detailed questions from LAist about the incident, saying they were waiting for the official after-action report and investigations to be completed.

What could help?

The county’s office of emergency management also declined to answer specific questions from LAist about its general plans for evacuating people with disabilities from their homes during disasters.

Its publicly available emergency plan details no specifics about evacuating and supporting people with disabilities. Its mass transportation plan, approved in 2017, includes specific transit and paratransit agencies that can assist with evacuating people with disabilities, but not much detail beyond that.

Isaacson Kailes said that’s a systemic problem in emergency planning.

“ The plans say they may use them, they will consider, they could. But they're not specific about they will, and here's the plan, and here's the response time,  and here are the contact people, and here's what we can expect in terms of resources,” Isaacson Kailes said. “There needs to be a very specific plan.”

Emergency plans also tend to take a triage approach, Skaggs said. That means that instead of centering people with disabilities in disaster response, they may be treated as an afterthought in the desperate effort to save as many lives as possible.

“We recognized very early that disability rights were something that were frequently set aside during emergencies and disasters and considered in many ways as a fabulous thing to have, but not necessary,” Skaggs said. “That could not be more wrong.  You are inadvertently, systematically eliminating them from the plans.”

While detailed plans are a necessary foundation, they’re no silver bullet and should never offer a false sense of security, Skaggs and Isaacson Kailes emphasized.

“ How do we communicate with people that even when there is a plan, the first thing you have to do is to have your own backup plan?” Isaacson Kailes said. “Even if it means a neighbor has to literally throw you in the backseat of a car without your wheelchair, without your mobility devices, just to save your life. And I think that's a stark reality that people don't think about.”

L.A. County has taken steps to improve its emergency response for people with disabilities, but some say efforts have stalled or gone backwards in recent years.

The county previously had an Access and Functional Needs Advisory Committee, which brought together members of the disabled community, disability experts, agencies, officials and other stakeholders to develop better plans for assisting vulnerable communities during disasters.

That committee was in the process of developing a more detailed evacuation plan for people with disabilities, but it was never finished, Greenwood said. The committee was dissolved in 2020 after a consent decree ended.

In a 2023 review of L.A. county’s emergency planning, the state urged the county to, among other things, reestablish the committee and create specific procedures for evacuating people with disabilities.

Its recommendations were not fulfilled.

“When a fire occurred, the lack of these protocols potentially contributed to the loss of life, which can be described as ‘negligent,’” Isaacson Kailes wrote in an email to LAist.

A family mourns and seeks answers

Experts emphasized there’s no way to know if things could have been different for the Mitchells even with a comprehensive plan in place.

The family, meanwhile, feels the system failed them.

“My dad was let down,” Anthony Mitchell Jr. told LAist. “I feel that whole area was let down, that side of Altadena.”

His sister agreed.

“ I'm absolutely just angry and mad and just upset,” White said.

Six months after the fire, their grief has not subsided either.

“ I wish my father was here,” Anthony Mitchell Jr. said. “My daughter has waited since she was in elementary for my dad to show up at graduation like he did all his grandkids out here. She was broken-hearted.”

Anthony Mitchell Jr. lived with his dad in Altadena from the age of 13 until he joined the Marines out of high school. He recalled fond memories of Christmas.

“It'd be a smorgasbord Christmas breakfast,  and it'd be a smorgasbord at Christmas dinner,” Anthony Mitchell Jr. said. “Collard greens, corn bread, roasted duck, roasted beef, just all types of food. And I remember my dad, man, he would be cooking. My stepmom would be cooking. Everybody would be cooking at their respective houses and come together for this big potluck at the end.”

White said she’ll miss her father’s regular calls, his sage advice and his sense of humor.

“He loved to keep you laughing. He always had good advice,” White said. “Any time I called my dad, he was there. He would say, ‘What you got for me, baby?’ For my birthday, he would sing ‘Happy Birthday’ in a Cookie Monster voice, which I'm definitely going to miss.”

A brochure the Mitchells family put together for the funeral of the family patriarch and Justin.

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Courtesy Hajime White

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For the funeral, the family put together a brochure to celebrate the family’s patriarch and Justin Mitchell.

“We celebrate Uncle’s legacy — the man who could flip a steak like a pro, drop a joke like a comedian and make any room feel like home,” the brochure reads. “We celebrate Justin’s joy — the way he made life lighter, the way he brought warmth to every moment.”

Anthony Mitchell Sr.’s children hope their father and brother’s deaths will at least lead to concrete change in the case of future disasters.

They said they want to see better efforts to employ other ways of notifying people about emergencies, such as sirens; they want officials to prioritize plans to evacuate older people and those with disabilities; and they want to see funding to support the families of disaster victims.

“What I would like to mainly see change is that everyone is treated with respect,” White said, “everyone is not left behind.”

LAist watchdog correspondent Jordan Rynning contributed to this report.