FIRE! READY? UMMM

Published in the Nov. 22, 2025 issue.

Several McGee residents, including those whose homes were destroyed in the Pack Fire, told The Sheet this week they never received notifications to evacuate, even as the emergency became imminent.

Instead, some residents were only alerted to the danger when sheriff’s deputies arrived at their doors, giving them little time to evacuate and decide which of their belongings to take or leave to burn.

Mono County, responsible for administering the alerts, is aware of the problem, but doesn’t have a solid explanation for the gap.

“I mean the system functioned properly. It went out via confirmation from FEMA, so it worked. But once it hit the cell towers, it could’ve dropped,” reasoned Chris Mokracek, Mono County Emergency Manager.

The emergency alerts, based on cell tower signals, rely on residents’ cell phones to receive the messages. There were power outages in the area during the fire, which may have disrupted cell phone services, and some people might not have gotten the notifications because they were in areas with bad service, he said.

The service alert is supposed to automatically ping all cell phones within a designated area – it should even be able to alert tourists and visitors.

Andrea Walker, McGee resident who evacuated, didn’t buy this explanation. She did not receive any evacuation alerts, even though she had service on her phone at the time, she said.

“There was absolutely service. I was able to text,” Walker said. “I got a phone call from my friend who asked me to pick her kids up.”

Another resident said that though he was notified, his wife on Elani Lane in McGee was not. He was able to text his wife to warn her, but he said, “Some people could have really been at risk.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, Mono County officials did not yet have a definitive count of how many people did or did not receive last week’s evacuation alerts, wrote Sandra Moberly, Mono County administrative officer, in an email.

“When I’m sending out an

, I get a confirmation from FEMA. But I’m just casting out a signal. I have no idea who received it,” Mokracek said.

Recently, Mono County switched its emergency alerting system from CodeRED to Genasys Protect.

Both systems work similarly and use cell towers to deliver messages, but Genasys has recently faced nationwide scrutiny after a family filed a lawsuit alleging the system failed to issue evacuation warnings for the Eaton Wildfire in time.

Mokracek didn’t see this as a red flag of the software.

“I don’t believe it’s an issue with Genasys,” he said. “Otherwise, we would have changed it. We will continue to monitor it and work with FEMA and other agencies to troubleshoot the system.”

Moberly said the county has been working closely with Genasys to improve performance by conducting regular tests of the system. It last tested the Crowley Lake area on Sept. 25.

But even in that last test, Mokracek said he saw some flaws, largely with the information database being out of date. When the County switched over from CodeRED to Genasys, it transferred the data with it. And a lot of that information was out of date.

“We’ll get a report [during testing] that maybe a landline call failed because people moved years ago,” Mokracek said.

But, again, the service was supposed to notify every cell phone in the affected area, even if people hadn’t updated their information with the County.

Mokracek said also he was “frustrated” with the apparent cell service problem. He said he’d been working with local cell carriers since the last test to ensure they had the hardware to deliver alerts to the community, and confirmed that the hardware was working.

Evidently, it was not during the fire.

“I don’t want to make excuses or play the blame game, but…” he said, his voice trailing off. “There are just so many variables to it.”

With the system failure in mind, Mokracek pushed that people should sign up for the County’s emergency alert program, “Ready Mono,” manually to ensure their data is up to date.

People who sign up can select their preferred alert format (text, phone call, or email) and language (English or Spanish). It also gives residents the option to opt into National Weather Service alerts, which may provide warnings that fire or storms are on their way.

*Note: this would not have been helpful preceding the Pack Fire, as the National Weather Service did not issue any warnings of fire danger, but still. Hypotheticals.

Signing up can also allow people to receive alerts about their property when they are out of town.

Considering the issues with the alert system, Mono County relies heavily on law enforcement to carry out door-to-door evacuations as a primary method of ensuring residents are safely evacuated.

“Really, our first line of evacuation is law enforcement, boots on the ground, going door to door,” Mokracek said.

Sheriff Ingrid Braun praised the effectiveness of the physical evacuations. 

“It worked remarkably well,” she said.

She added that neighborhoods often communicate evacuation orders among themselves, and that this neighbor-to-neighbor communication can sometimes outpace what law enforcement is able to do.

“In the Crowley Lake community, people took care of each other,” she said. “The power of the phone call and text communication was faster than we could do it. They were on top of it.”

She was aware the alerts were not effectively administered throughout the county, but she did not know why they failed.

For residents looking to update their information for the County, they may do so at https://ready.mono.ca.gov/.