Emergency manager sues LA County, alleging retaliation over Eaton Fire whistleblower complaints

An employee of Los Angeles County’s Office of Emergency Management has sued his employer, alleging he was retaliated against for making whistleblower complaints about the response to the deadly Eaton Fire.

Nicholas Vaquero, an associate director in the Office of Emergency Management, alleges that officials leading the office failed to properly staff the response to the fire, which killed at least 19 people and burned thousands of homes and businesses in January 2025.

He also alleges the county’s emergency alerts were inadequate and that it submitted fraudulent data in order to receive FEMA reimbursement. Vaquero says in the suit that he used official county whistleblower channels to raise his concerns, in addition to speaking to OEM’s top two officials, Director Kevin McGowan and Deputy Director Leslie Luke.

Vaquero’s lawyers and the county declined to comment on the substance of the lawsuit. “L.A. County is going to address the allegations in court,” spokesperson Elizabeth Marcellino wrote in a statement to LAist.

LAist previously reported on Vaquero’s whistleblower complaint, in which he alleged that a now-retired employee with “a long history of sleeping on the job” was put in charge of emergency workers sending evacuation alerts and was asleep during critical moments of the first night of the Eaton Fire, when many of the deaths and much of the devastation occurred.

In the lawsuit, Vaquero alleges he has faced retaliation after raising his concerns, including being excluded from meetings he previously was a part of and being treated with hostility by the department’s leadership, among other things.

The complaint comes after county leadership launched a three-year restructuring of the Office of Emergency Management, which includes working to add staff and to conduct regular training for all staff on emergency alert software.

An after-action report from the McChrystal Group highlighted that the emergency management office was severely short-staffed during the fire. The department, which serves 10 million people, had a staff of 37 people at the time the fires broke out. Meanwhile, New York City has a population of 8.5 million and an emergency management staff of about 200 people, the report noted.