Fourteen members of California’s congressional delegation launched an investigation Monday into the erroneous alerts and critical delays in Los Angeles County’s emergency alert system they say caused “widespread alarm” during the recent wildfires.

In a series of letters authored by Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach, the group asked for answers from Los Angeles County, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Federal Communications Commission and Genasys, Inc., which operates the wireless emergency alert system for the county.

Garcia wrote that timely, targeted alerts “can mean the difference between life and death.”

“However, unclear messages sent to the wrong locations, multiple times and after the emergency has passed, can lead to alerting fatigue and erosion of public trust,” he added.

This comes nearly a month after wireless alerts were wrongly issued countywide, urging about 10 million people to prepare for evacuation. The alerts were meant only for those in the Kenneth Fire evacuation area, but residents as far as Long Beach, miles from any active fire, received them.

The next day, county emergency officials apologized, explaining this was caused by a software glitch and announced that further cellphone alerts would come from the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

Garcia said the investigation will also look into delayed or nonexistent alerts to residents in west Altadena.

Records and interviews compiled by the Los Angeles Times found that it took nearly nine hours for Altadena homeowners west of Lake Avenue to receive evacuation orders. Many homeowners never received an evacuation warning, even as flames marched up their street and swallowed up nearby homes, the Times reported.

According to the same investigation, all 17 deaths confirmed in the Eaton Fire occurred in the area west of North Lake Avenue.

“During a state of emergency, you can’t notify millions of people that either they should evacuate when it’s not necessary or not sending them alerts, like in the case of Altadena,” Garcia said. “The whole system completely broke down. It happened multiple times and it’s not acceptable.”

Garcia’s letters request that — by April 1 —  L.A. County, FEMA, the FCC and Genasys each provide a comprehensive breakdown of the alert system and the origin of its “precise failures.” The congressman also asked each to explain their role in its use, any correspondence exchanged in the days following an erroneous or delayed alert and an update on an internal investigation that began last month.

In a letter to Richard Danforth, the CEO of Genasys, Inc., Garcia asked for the company’s list of contracts, including its agreement with the county, and all correspondence — emails, texts and other written communication — in the week following the false alert.

Garcia, who sits on the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said Monday that he wants the probe to spur any necessary changes to prevent future false alarms.

Oversight authority of the county alert systems falls under a federal responsibility through the FCC, he said. Whether or not public hearings will come out of the investigation is up to “House Republican majority,” on the committee, Garcia added.

In response to the false alerts, Long Beach officials established their own online dashboard, encouraging residents to not disregard further notices.

Errors like these only further mistrust between residents and local authorities, Garcia said, especially in Long Beach, which operates its own notification system.

“A lot of folks don’t know that there’s two separate systems,” Garcia said. “So when the county system fails, you’re actually causing damage to the Long Beach system, because people are losing trust in the notification period, even though they’re completely different.”

L.A. County is also conducting its own investigation into the gaps in the alert system.

“It is important for us to gather all of the facts, so that we have a complete picture of what happened,” L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger said. “And I make you this promise — that is going to be my priority moving forward.”