Worker with key Eaton Fire role fell asleep on the job: whistleblower

The LA County worker overseeing the evacuation alerts during the deadly Eaton Fire had a reputation for sleeping on the job, a bombshell whistleblower complaint claims.

The complaint, filed by Nick Vaquero, an associate director in the county’s Office of Emergency Management, alleges that longtime county official Steve Lieberman was caught asleep at work more than a dozen times before he was put in charge of the overnight alert shift during the highly destructive wildfire in January 2025, LAist reported.

Lieberman, who retired two months after the fire, supervised the team responsible for sending urgent warnings and evacuation notices to residents as flames tore through foothill communities northeast of Los Angeles.

The Eaton Fire ultimately killed 19 people and forced thousands to flee their homes, making it one of the region’s deadliest recent wildfires.

Some residents in Altadena reportedly did not receive evacuation alerts until after 3 a.m., hours after the fire had already begun threatening neighborhoods.

An independent after-action report released in September 2025, commissioned by LA County supervisors and produced by the consulting firm McChrystal Group, found that a lack of resources and outdated policies for sending emergency alerts led to delayed evacuation warnings as flames began consuming neighborhoods.

Vaquero alleges that county leadership ignored repeated warnings about staffing levels for the critical overnight operation, putting public safety at risk, he told LAist.

County officials, including Kevin McGowan and Leslie Luke, strongly dispute the claims. They say they saw Lieberman fully awake during the response and reject the allegation that he had a history of sleeping on the job.

Lieberman himself also defended his record.

He admitted to the LAist that during nearly four decades working in emergency services, he may have dozed off during long shifts — but insisted it was never a regular problem and did not happen on the night of the Eaton Fire.

“I’m not going to say that never happened in 38 years,” Lieberman told the publication.

“I’m 63 years old. I’ve got some health issues. We worked a lot of overtime,” he said, adding that he didn’t doze at work “as a general rule, hell no.”

The allegations have intensified questions about how LA County handled the critical early hours of the Eaton Fire, particularly whether evacuation warnings reached residents quickly enough.

Multiple reviews of the response are now underway as officials face mounting pressure to explain what happened that night.

For residents who waited hours for alerts as flames spread, the answers cannot come soon enough.

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