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Officials described a joint process among county fire, sheriff and OEM officials to determine necessary evacuations and ensure they were implemented, through both wireless alerts that ping cellphones within a certain geographic area and on-the-ground patrols.

However, anonymous sources within county government told The Times that the west Altadena error wasn’t the fault of OEM officials.

The sources said the OEM team sent out the evacuation order to west Altadena soon after it was ordered to do so — a revelation that appears to rest the blame on county fire or sheriff officials.

Once a decision is made to evacuate an area, Luna said, there’s a two-layered process: OEM sends out the electronic alert and deputies in the field are alerted to begin making sure the order is carried out.

Then, it reports that back to a representative from the OEM, either in-person or over dispatch, and the OEM sends out any wireless alert and updates the county’s online notification system, operated by Genasys.