Deadly LA wildfires show little sign of relenting after five die and 2000 buildings are destroyed
Thousands of firefighters and emergency personnel spent a second exhausting night battling flames and evacuating residents as a series of rampant wildfires raged almost unchecked.
Thousands of firefighters and emergency personnel spent a second exhausting night battling flames and evacuating residents as a series of wildfires raged almost unchecked.
With at least five violent infernos simultaneously burning in America’s most populated county, fresh evacuation orders were issued overnight.
By early Thursday, roughly 12,000 hectares were aflame, at least five people dead and more than 200,000 without power across the wider Los Angeles area. Tens of thousands of residents were ordered to leave their homes.
More than 2000 structures were damaged as the blazes remained largely uncontained Thursday, stretching the region’s firefighting resources to their limits.
Nearly every corner of sprawling Los Angeles, home to some 10 million people, was smothered by a sky of smoke and ash.
A brush fire in the Hollywood Hills broke out overnight, forcing further evacuations and causing the city fire chief to leave a press briefing. Firefighters appeared to be making progress with that blaze by Thursday, and the evacuation zone was later lifted.
The now 16ha fire is burning in the popular Runyon Canyon hiking trail near the Hollywood sign, right above the heart of the city.
The blazes have been fanned by Santa Ana winds of up to 160km an hour — the speed of a Category 2 hurricane — and fuelled by parched vegetation due to a lack of rain in recent months.
Strong winds and dry conditions are expected to persist across Los Angeles and Ventura counties through Thursday and into the night, with gusts up to 113km an hour in some areas.
“We’re still seeing some extreme fire weather through tonight, possibly improving a little tomorrow,” Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said. “There’s a long way to go here before we see the conditions improving.” More than 7500 personnel have been deployed to combat the blazes, including firefighters from neighbouring states. Oregon and Idaho are among the states supplying vehicles.
All schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the country, were ordered closed on Thursday because of fire danger and noxious smoke affecting much of the region. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass asked residents to stay off the roads unless they were evacuating.
Earlier in the day, fires raged in the affluent oceanside Pacific Palisades neighbourhood west of Los Angeles, in and around Pasadena to the east and further north in the San Fernando Valley.
The Palisades fire destroyed more than 1000 structures and left entire neighbourhoods in ruins. It covered 6960ha and continued to grow on Thursday morning, according to Cal Fire. Two elementary schools in the area were destroyed, as was 30pc of the Palisades’ high school. In parts of Santa Monica, a densely populated neighbourhood of the city just south of the Palisades, a curfew was in force from sunset to sunrise.
The Eaton fire in the Pasadena area, which also damaged or destroyed more than 1000 structures, was 4290ha and growing early on Thursday, according to the California fire authority. Authorities in Pasadena issued a warning about unsafe drinking water as a result of the Eaton fire, advising residents not to drink or cook with tap water.
Both the Palisades and Eaton fires were completely uncontained on Thursday morning. Another blaze — dubbed the Lidia Fire — also started on Wednesday afternoon in part of the Angeles National Forest north of the city and grew to 160ha overnight. Firefighters managed to get that fire 40pc contained by early Thursday.
The destruction of high-value homes in the path of the rapidly burning fires, some of the most expensive in America, will “likely result in one of the top five costliest wildfires in US history,” with a multibillion-dollar loss for insurers, broker Aon said.
The secluded Pacific Palisades neighbourhood has long been home to some of LA’s wealthiest residents, including numerous A-list actors and celebrities.
Actor Billy Crystal and his wife Janice said their Palisades home was completely destroyed by fire. “Janice and I lived in our home since 1979. We raised our children and grandchildren here. Every inch of our house was filled with love,” Crystal said in a statement. “Words cannot describe the enormity of the devastation we are witnessing and experiencing.”
Reality-TV star and hotel heiress Paris Hilton posted footage to Instagram showing the smouldering ruins of her home. “Heartbroken to find out what happened to my house by seeing that it was burning to the ground live on tv,” she wrote.
Much of Hollywood, including major studios operated by Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal, shut down production on their lots. Studios cancelled movie premieres for the Ryan Gosling-produced horror movie Wolf Man and for Better Man, a film about British pop star Robbie Williams. Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show on ABC, which airs from Hollywood, was cancelled for Wednesday night. At the Universal lot, shows including the Max comedy Hacks stopped production. The Critics Choice Awards ceremony slated for Sunday was postponed to late January.
This year, Southern California has been off to one of its driest seasons on record. Downtown Los Angeles has received just 4mm of rain since October 1, compared with a normal total of 115mm so far, according to the National Weather Service. Northern California, by contrast, has received a bounty of rain and snow.
The fire threat has increased greatly in California and other parts of the West amid a hotter and drier climate and an expansion of homes into the wildland areas surrounding major cities. Sixteen of the 20 most destructive fires on record in California have broken out in the past decade, according to Cal Fire.
The Wall Street Journal
Musk’s X in $16m Trump lawsuit deal
Elon Musk’s X will pay about $US10m ($16m) to settle a lawsuit Donald Trump brought against the social media company, then known as Twitter, and its former chief executive.
’Speak his language’: the playbook for handling Trump
Mexico’s president believed Trump wouldn’t yield on tariffs, but she still negotiated a deal that world leaders are studying for their own trade talks. Albanese should study it too.