Thursday, March 12, 2026

Civil Rights Attorneys Crump, Douglas File Records Request Targeting LA County’s Eaton Fire Response in West Altadena

Civil rights attorneys Ben Crump [photo credit: Ben Crump Law] and Carl Douglas [photo credit: Douglas Hicks Law]

The civil rights attorneys say they are seeking county documents on evacuation delays in the historically Black community where 18 of 19 fire deaths occurred

Civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Carl Douglas announced Thursday the filing of a California Public Records Act request seeking documents from Los Angeles County about the emergency response to the January 2025 Eaton Fire in West Altadena, where 18 of the 19 people killed in the blaze lived.

The request, announced at a news conference at Douglas Hicks Law in Los Angeles, is part of what the attorneys described as an effort to examine whether residents of the historically Black community received delayed evacuation warnings and unequal emergency response, and to explore potential federal civil rights claims concerning whether race played a role in the county’s actions before and during the fire, according to a press release issued by Ben Crump Law.

The filing adds a private legal channel to accountability efforts already underway. In February, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced a civil rights investigation into the same emergency response, examining whether race, age or disability discrimination contributed to evacuation delays in West Altadena, according to the attorney general’s office.

The Eaton Fire ignited on the evening of January 7, 2025, in Eaton Canyon and burned more than 14,000 acres over 24 days, destroying more than 9,000 structures and becoming the second most destructive wildfire in California history, according to Cal Fire. The fire devastated Altadena, an unincorporated community just north of Pasadena.

Residents east of Lake Avenue — the thoroughfare that divides Altadena — received evacuation notices within about an hour of the fire erupting, but residents west of Lake Avenue did not receive evacuation orders for nearly nine hours, according to Los Angeles Times reporting confirmed by the county-commissioned McChrystal Group after-action report and cited by the attorney general’s office. The first evacuation order for West Altadena was not issued until approximately 3:25 a.m. on January 8, 2025, by which time homes in the area were already burning, multiple news outlets reported.

Crump, a nationally known civil rights and personal injury attorney based in Tallahassee, Florida, has represented families of Eaton Fire victims in wrongful death lawsuits against Southern California Edison and has been involved in fire-recovery efforts in Altadena. Douglas, the founding partner of Douglas Hicks Law in Los Angeles, is a veteran civil rights trial attorney known for his role on the O.J. Simpson defense team and for securing major civil rights verdicts against government agencies, according to his firm’s website.

The attorneys said in the press release that public reporting indicates some residents received evacuation alerts hours later than nearby communities as conditions rapidly worsened, and that they are examining whether delayed alerts and disparities in emergency response contributed to preventable harm.

The California Public Records Act allows any person to request records held by state and local government agencies. Agencies have 10 days to respond to a request, according to the law.

Bonta, the attorney general, said when he announced the state investigation last month that it was driven by an overarching question: whether the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s delay in notifying and evacuating the historically Black West Altadena community violated state anti-discrimination and disability rights laws, according to his office’s press release. The AG’s investigation is being conducted by the California Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Enforcement Section.

LA County has said it cooperated fully with all independent reviews of the fire response. In a statement issued at the time of the AG’s announcement, the county said no review had found discriminatory or structural bias in the county’s response, and that the county believes emergency responders acted as well as they could under extreme and unprecedented conditions, according to CBS News and other outlets.

The press conference was held at 11:30 a.m. Thursday at Douglas Hicks Law, 5120 W. Goldleaf Circle, Suite 140, Los Angeles. Affected Altadena families also participated, according to the press release.

The Eaton Fire killed 19 people, all but one of whom lived in West Altadena, according to the attorney general’s office. The average age of those who died was 77, Bonta said. The fire’s cause has been attributed to high-tension power lines operated by Southern California Edison, and the U.S. Department of Justice has sued the utility for damages.