Speaking from near the Palisades in Los Angeles:

After we all knew the hurricane-force Santa Anas posed a big danger of fire, because of both news stories and phone alerts, the whole city accidentally got a major "evacuate now" warning, with the big WOOPy noise from our cellphones, that was only supposed to go to residents in a particular area. I had my quadriplegic husband dressed and out of bed and our old go-bags and medical equipment thrown in the car in the 20 minutes it took for the retraction to come out. I also had a bit of a panic attack.

Some people decided to turn off their alarm settings because of that error. But I took it as a warning that we were not ready enough.

I went into the bags and made sure, for instance, that the pants fit me, as I'd gained weight in a year. I stashed the fridge meds in a cold carrier, handy in the fridge. And put the right cat food for the new cat in the cat-kit/litterbox. And created a go-box for the box turtle.

Then I stowed as much as possible in the actual car, including the Important Paperwork file.

All along, we were monitoring as the fires started to pop up and spread.

At 9 pm, we got another WOOP alert. Our address had become part (the far edge) of the Yellow Zone. Not the Red Zone. But as you said, who's going to catch a warning at 2am? (Well, me! But it's a lot harder to react at that hour) In fact, I'm sure that's why CalFire expanded the zones so wide at 9 pm, because they wanted to be sure they wouldn't have to issue a new one overnight.

So we bailed immediately but calmly. Spent 5 days at a hotel near LAX.

Fortunately we had no damage, but had to dip into our emergency drinking water for a few more days until they lifted the Boil Water notice.

Super glad we had and heeded those early warnings about how dangerous those hot dry winds were going to be, and the 9 pm evacuation zone warning.

The relatively low death count in the Palisades fire came from the accurate weather forecast.