Tag: county official

Explosion at a Pennsylvania nursing home kills at least 2, governor says

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A thunderous explosion at a nursing home just outside Philadelphia killed at least two people, collapsed part of the building, sent flames shooting out and left people trapped inside, authorities said.Video above: Neighbor describes sound of nursing home explosionPennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a news conference several hours after the explosion that at least two had been killed.The explosion happened at Bristol Health & Rehab Center in Bristol Township, just as a utility crew had been on site looking for a gas leak, although the cause of the explosion was unclear several hours later, as was the extent of the casualties.A plume of black smoke rose from the nursing home, as emergency responders, fire trucks and ambulances from across the region rushed there, joined by earthmoving equipment.Police Lt. Sean Cosgrove said he didn’t know if anyone was missing, and that residents had been evacuated by emergency responders, bystanders and staff.“A lot of the details at this point are still unknown,” he told reporters at the scene.Bucks County emergency management officials said they received the report of an explosion at approximately 2:17 p.m. and said a portion of the building was reported to have collapsed. Ruth Miller, a Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency spokesperson, said her agency had been informed that people were trapped inside.Willie Tye, who lives about a block away, said he was sitting at home watching a basketball game on TV when he heard a “loud kaboom.”“I thought an airplane or something came and fell on my house,” Tye said.He got up to go look and saw “fire everywhere” and people escaping the building. The explosion looked like it happened in the kitchen area of the nursing home, he said. Tye said some of the people who live or work there didn’t make it out.“Just got to keep praying for them,” Tye said.The cause of the explosion was unclear.The local gas utility, PECO, said its crews had responded to reports of a gas odor at the nursing home shortly after 2 p.m.“While crews were on site, an explosion occurred at the facility. PECO crews shut off natural gas and electric service to the facility to ensure the safety of first responders and local residents,” the utility said in a statement.Nils Hagen-Frederiksen, press secretary at the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, said investigators from the safety division were headed to the scene.Hagen-Frederiksen said first responders and emergency management officials were describing it as a gas explosion, but that won’t be confirmed until his agency can examine the scene up close.Musuline Watson, who said she was a certified nursing assistant the facility, told WPVI-TV that over the weekend, she and others there smelled gas, but “there was no heat in the room, so we didn’t take it to be anything.”The nursing home is about 20 miles northeast of Philadelphia. Its owner, Saber Healthcare Group, said it was working with local emergency authorities. The facility had been known until recently as Silver Lake Healthcare Center.Jim Morgan, president of the Bristol Township School Board, said district buses would take people from the nursing home to a reunification center at Truman High School. He said officials were working on setting up beds and providing water and other needs to residents.“This is just something that is sad for everybody and the families and the workers that are there,” Davis said.According to Medicare.gov, the 174-bed facility underwent a standard fire safety inspection in September 2024, during which no citations were issued. But Medicare’s overall rating of the facility is listed as “much below average,” with poor ratings for health inspections in particular.

BRISTOL, Pa. (Video above: WPVI via CNN Newsource) —

A thunderous explosion at a nursing home just outside Philadelphia killed at least two people, collapsed part of the building, sent flames shooting out and left people trapped inside, authorities said.

Video above: Neighbor describes sound of nursing home explosion

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a news conference several hours after the explosion that at least two had been killed.

The explosion happened at Bristol Health & Rehab Center in Bristol Township, just as a utility crew had been on site looking for a gas leak, although the cause of the explosion was unclear several hours later, as was the extent of the casualties.

A plume of black smoke rose from the nursing home, as emergency responders, fire trucks and ambulances from across the region rushed there, joined by earthmoving equipment.

Police Lt. Sean Cosgrove said he didn’t know if anyone was missing, and that residents had been evacuated by emergency responders, bystanders and staff.

“A lot of the details at this point are still unknown,” he told reporters at the scene.

Bucks County emergency management officials said they received the report of an explosion at approximately 2:17 p.m. and said a portion of the building was reported to have collapsed. Ruth Miller, a Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency spokesperson, said her agency had been informed that people were trapped inside.

Willie Tye, who lives about a block away, said he was sitting at home watching a basketball game on TV when he heard a “loud kaboom.”

“I thought an airplane or something came and fell on my house,” Tye said.

He got up to go look and saw “fire everywhere” and people escaping the building. The explosion looked like it happened in the kitchen area of the nursing home, he said. Tye said some of the people who live or work there didn’t make it out.

“Just got to keep praying for them,” Tye said.

The cause of the explosion was unclear.

The local gas utility, PECO, said its crews had responded to reports of a gas odor at the nursing home shortly after 2 p.m.

“While crews were on site, an explosion occurred at the facility. PECO crews shut off natural gas and electric service to the facility to ensure the safety of first responders and local residents,” the utility said in a statement.

Nils Hagen-Frederiksen, press secretary at the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, said investigators from the safety division were headed to the scene.

Hagen-Frederiksen said first responders and emergency management officials were describing it as a gas explosion, but that won’t be confirmed until his agency can examine the scene up close.

Musuline Watson, who said she was a certified nursing assistant the facility, told WPVI-TV that over the weekend, she and others there smelled gas, but “there was no heat in the room, so we didn’t take it to be anything.”

The nursing home is about 20 miles northeast of Philadelphia. Its owner, Saber Healthcare Group, said it was working with local emergency authorities. The facility had been known until recently as Silver Lake Healthcare Center.

Jim Morgan, president of the Bristol Township School Board, said district buses would take people from the nursing home to a reunification center at Truman High School. He said officials were working on setting up beds and providing water and other needs to residents.

“This is just something that is sad for everybody and the families and the workers that are there,” Davis said.

According to Medicare.gov, the 174-bed facility underwent a standard fire safety inspection in September 2024, during which no citations were issued. But Medicare’s overall rating of the facility is listed as “much below average,” with poor ratings for health inspections in particular.

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December 23, 2025
She died in the Eaton fire. Her family says emergency alert software was to blame

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Attorneys representing the family of Stacey Darden, an Altadena resident who perished in the Eaton fire, filed a wrongful death lawsuit Monday alleging that the software that Los Angeles County uses for emergency alerts was defective and failed to alert her to leave in time.

The complaint, filed more than 10 months after the Eaton fire engulfed Altadena, targets the emergency alert software company Genasys and blames the company’s predesigned evacuation zones, or “polygons,” for keeping residents east of Lake Avenue from getting timely evacuation orders the night of the fire.

Although the lawsuit also blames the Southern California Edison utility company for starting the fire with its equipment, like several other lawsuits filed in the wake of the deadly blaze, it is among the first to focus on how evacuation orders failed to reach a large swath of residents.

A spokesperson for Genasys said the company’s attorneys were reviewing the complaint. “Genasys denies any wrongdoing and will vigorously defend itself against these allegations,” the spokesperson said.

Gerry Darden, the sister of Stacey Darden, said her family thought long and hard about the decision to bring a complaint against Genasys for her sister’s death.

“Edison started this fire, and Genasys never warned her that she was in danger,” Darden said in a statement. “My sister was studiously following the evacuation orders the night of the Eaton Fire. The truth is that if these companies had done what they were supposed to do, Stacey would be alive today.”

The morning sun peeks through the smoke from the Altadena fire as seen from Sylmar on Jan. 8.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

On Jan. 7, Los Angeles emergency officials and fire responders were quickly overwhelmed when extreme red flag conditions ignited a spate of devastating fires across the region, from the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains to the San Gabriel Mountains. When flames erupted near Eaton Canyon around 6:30 p.m., erratic hurricane-force winds carried red-hot embers for miles, igniting countless small fires that ultimately destroyed thousands of homes. Nineteen people in Altadena died.

In the fire’s aftermath, The Times reported that residents of west Altadena did not get electronic evacuation orders until hours after the fire had started and engulfed the area. All but one of the 19 deaths from the Eaton fire occurred west of Lake Avenue, where residents did not receive evacuation warnings until around 3:30 a.m. on Jan. 8, at least six hours after their neighbors on the other side of the Lake Avenue began to get alerts.

At a news conference at Altadena’s main library, Doug Boxer, an attorney working with L.A. Fire Justice, said Stacey Darden, 54, and her sister Gerry were on high alert when the Eaton fire ignited and were constantly monitoring the news for information on evacuation zones.

Darden’s Altadena home — 2528 Marengo Ave., about five blocks west of Lake Avenue — was not included in an evacuation order zone, or “polygon,” Boxer said.

According to the lawsuit, the only evacuation order for Darden’s neighborhood did not hit her cellphone until 5:43 a.m. on Jan. 8. Her last cellphone activity, it said, is believed to be more than two hours earlier, around 3:30 a.m.

“By the time an evacuation order was finally pushed to her phone, it was too late,” attorney Mikal Watts said in a statement. “This is not a tragedy of bad luck, this is a tragedy of corporate failures.”

“At its core, this is really a case of digital redlining,” Watts said at the news conference, referring to Lake Avenue’s historic role as a boundary for racial redlining in Altadena.

The suit seeks to answer a question that the company, the county, and its after-action report have thus far been unable to answer: Why were alerts for residents west of Lake Avenue delayed?

An evacuation warning from the Los Angeles Fire Department.

(Kirby Lee / Getty Images)

Since January, several neighborhood groups in Altadena have rallied around the issue of late alerts, pressing county officials for answers as to why the historically marginalized west side of town received alerts so much later than the comparatively more affluent, whiter east side.

The complaint alleges that Genasys entered into a contract to provide L.A. County with a mass notification software system that county officials could use to alert residents in the case of emergencies and had a duty to provide a system that was “safe in its operation for its intended purpose” and “free of defects in its design and manufacture.”

It argues, however, that Genasys’ system was “defective and unreasonably dangerous,” because of its predefined evacuation zones, which determine how alerts are rolled out onto cellphones and other technology in a given area. According to the suit, the zones did not take into consideration vulnerable populations including the sick and elderly, who need more time to evacuate.

A recent state report highlighted a number of issues with senior facility operators and their inability to evacuate all of their residents as the emergency unfolded.

As missteps around the Eaton fire response have come to light and questions of who is responsible have mounted, officials with Genasys have maintained that their company’s software did not fail during the fire.

In March, Richard Danforth, the chief executive of Genasys, told stockholders in a Zoom meeting “the system was up and operational.”

According to a county-supported after-action report from the McChrystal Group, most of the issues with alerts in the Eaton fire were due to human error, not technological issues.

At the time of the fire, the Genasys software was new to L.A. County and only a handful of staff members at the county Office of Emergency Management had been trained to use it before the fires broke out, the report stated.

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Jenny Jarvie, Terry Castleman

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November 17, 2025
Riverside County confirms first 2 flu-related deaths this season; L.A. County has reported 1 so far

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With flu season in full swing, Riverside County public health officials are urging residents to get their vaccines and to take other precautions against respiratory viruses after reporting the county’s first two flu-related deaths this winter.

The deaths include a 73-year-old man and a 79-year-old woman from mid- and western Riverside County, respectively. Both had underlying health issues and died at local hospitals, according to county officials. No further information was immediately provided.

Last month, Los Angeles County confirmed its first flu death of the season. The deceased was an elderly resident with multiple underlying conditions and had no record of influenza vaccination this season, according to county health officials.

According to Riverside County’s weekly influenza surveillance report, current influenza-like illnesses activity levels are moderate in the area. The county typically logs people aged 65 and older as the bulk of pneumonia and influenza deaths in the county with few occurring among those 24 and younger. Data collected between Nov. 19-25 show pneumonia contributed to the bulk of deaths, which were largely affected by other diseases such as COVID-19.

“These tragedies remind us that influenza can be serious, especially for those who have health issues or weakened immune systems,” Dr. Geoffrey Leung, public health officer for Riverside County, said in a statement. “There are simple steps that can be taken to protect ourselves. Most important of these is to get vaccinated. We recommend that everyone over 6 months of age receive the flu vaccine.”

Respiratory viruses such as the flu and COVID-19 spread year-round but are more common in the United States between October and March. The virus is spread through coughing and sneezing. Anyone is prone to catch the virus but elderly people, children and those with weakened immune systems are more at risk.

Health officials urge people to stay up-to-date on vaccines, remain at home if sick, consider wearing a face mask, cover a cough or sneeze and wash hands throughout the day.

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Priscella Vega

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December 9, 2023
Dozens of new digital billboards will light up Los Angeles

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Dozens of digital billboards are poised to go up above Los Angeles freeways and boulevards, marking the largest expansion in the city in nearly two decades.

Despite opposition from more than a dozen neighborhood groups, the City Council backed a plan on Friday to allow 71 digital billboards to be installed on property owned by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Eleven council members approved the plan, with Traci Park, Nithya Raman and Katy Yaroslavsky voting no.

Opponents argued that the influx of new signs, which would change images every eight seconds, would make L.A. streets even deadlier by distracting drivers, while adding a new source of blight to the cityscape.

“Our shared open space should not be for sale to commercial messaging,” said Barbara Brodie, co-president of the Coalition for a Beautiful Los Angeles, an advocacy group that has opposes billboards. “They will cause unnecessary injury and death, pollute our visual environment and harm wildlife.”

The largest sign, at 1,200 square feet, will be alongside Union Station flashing at commuters along the 101 freeway as they head downtown from East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights. The stark visual changes the illuminated signs will bring to the landscape could scare Hollywood filmmakers away, actor Stacey Travis told the City Council.

“For lucrative one-hour shows and features, L.A. rarely plays itself,” said Travis, SAG-AFTRA’s chair of government and public policy in Los Angeles. “They will simply move productions elsewhere, and (the city will) lose the jobs, revenue and tourism that brings in millions of millions of dollars.”

But city and county officials say the new billboards will be a lucrative source of revenue while also offering traffic alerts. Seven out of every eight images are expected to be ads.

Holly Rockwell, a Metro executive who is overseeing the program, said the billboards will provide “real-time transportation messaging” and money that can be used for transportation projects, while also replacing “old and dilapidated static signs.”

During events like the Olympics, the billboards will be used to help direct traffic, she said.

The city and county will split the revenues, which were at one point projected to reach $300 million to $500 million over 20 years. As many as 300 nondigital billboards throughout the city could be removed through the program.

Metro’s plan now calls for 52 freeway-facing digital billboards, which can operate nearly 24 hours a day from 5 a.m. to 3 a.m. Another 19 billboards along major boulevards will operate from 5 a.m. to midnight. Before the latter group of signs can go up, they must go through a city permitting process.

Since all are on Metro property, many are near rail stations or along large thoroughfares, for example Westchester at Century and Aviation Boulevards near Los Angeles International Airport.

The fight over digital billboards harks back more than two decades, when the city blocked the widespread use of billboards that shone into people’s homes, confining them to certain areas. The legal battle between the city and outdoor advertising companies played out in court for years. Since then, the city has restricted digital signs to special districts in commercial areas.

Most digital billboards in the city have been concentrated downtown. Friday’s vote allows them in many more neighborhoods across L.A.

Since the vote was not unanimous, the billboard plan will requires a second vote next week. Groups such as Scenic Los Angeles, which has fought the proliferation of billboards, still hope to thwart the plan.

“There has been zero transparency on the financial aspects of this. When we did our own analysis, it looks horrible for the city and Metro,” said Dustan Batton, executive director of Scenic Los Angeles. He said thousands of his members oppose the plan, and he hopes that their pressure will convince some City Council members to change their minds.

The plan originally included 93 billboards but was watered down as it wound its way through city committees, with several council members opposing billboards in their districts.

Raman, who doesn’t have any billboards in her district, said she opposed the plan because of the hours of operation and concerns that billboards could be too close to housing. She said there has not been enough research into the effects of the billboards on traffic safety.

Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.

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Rachel Uranga, Caroline Petrow-Cohen

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December 9, 2023