Los Angeles County relied on “improvisation” for recovery efforts after the Eaton and Palisades fires, according to a new after-action report. The County released its second independent after-action report from the fires this Friday, Sep. 11.
During today’s L.A. County Board of Supervisors meeting, Erin Sutton, a partner for McChrystal Group and lead for the emergency management and public safety practice, said, “the short answer is that your people delivered, but the systems behind them didn’t always help them do it, it only worked because someone made it, not because a plan told them how. That is the major theme of this report and why the recommendations target overall systems rather than the people.”
The after-action report was conducted by the McChrystal Group, a leadership consulting and advisory services firm, analyzing the first 3 months of recovery from Jan. 7, 2025 to Mar. 31, 2025, and has identified 36 substantive findings and 25 actionable recommendations. The first after-action report was issued on Oct. 8, 2025, focusing on the first 36 hours of the disaster.
In the new report, a public survey respondent said, “I have nothing but good things to say about the County sta...