A whistleblower complaint filed with Los Angeles County alleges that an employee with "a long history of sleeping on the job" was in charge of emergency workers sending evacuation alerts during the most critical hours of the Eaton Fire — a disaster that killed 19 people and devastated the Altadena community in January 2025.
According to LAist, the complaint was filed in October 2025 by Nick Vaquero, an associate director in the Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) since 2023. The county's Chief Executive Office confirmed it received the complaint.
Steve Lieberman, a nearly 40-year county employee, supervised OEM's overnight shift from the evening of January 7 through the morning of January 8, 2025 — hours during which the Eaton Fire tore through Altadena. Vaquero alleges he personally witnessed Lieberman asleep at work more than a dozen times in the two years leading up to that critical shift.
"There is an entrenched pattern of mismanagement within the Office of Emergency Management," Vaquero wrote in his complaint. He added that the agency's "ability to perform its emergency management mission and safeguard county residents" had been "materially degraded."
By the time Lieberman's overnight shift began, the Palisades Fire had already devastated entire neighborhoods, and the Eaton Fire was spreading rapidly through unincorporated county territory. The National Weather Service had issued a "particularly dangerous situation" warning — a designation...
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