Weather forecasters in Los Angeles were expecting fast, dry winds to return towards the end of the weekend, threatening to fuel wildfires that have already destroyed 10,000 structures and killed 16 people.
Urgent “red flag” alerts – meaning critical fire weather conditions – announced by the US National Weather Service (NWS) said moderate to strong wind and low humidity would continue on Friday morning, as five fires raged across the metropolis.
Barbara Bruderlin, head of the Malibu Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce, described the impact of the fires as “total devastation and loss”.
“There are areas where everything is gone. There isn’t even a stick of wood left. It’s just dirt,” Bruderlin said.
Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass has come under intense criticism for her absence from the city during the first 24 hours of the crisis, when she was in Ghana, as part of an official White House delegation for the inauguration of that country’s president. She was assailed by political rivals on the right, including Rick Caruso, who ran against Bass in the 2022 mayoral election, but also faced criticism from left, which accused the mayor of cutting the budget for firefighting to pay for increased policing.
“The consistent defunding of other city programs in order to give the LAPD billions a year has consequences,” Ricci Sergienko, a lawyer and organizer with People’s City Council LA, told the Intercept. “The city is unprepared to handle this fire, and Los Angeles shouldn’t be in that position.”
In an interview with Fox LA, Los Angeles fire chief Kristin Crowley said that a cut of $17m in funding for her department, and problems with the water supply to hydrants in the Palisades, had undercut firefighters’ abilities to respond to the fires.
“My message is the fire department needs to be properly funded,” Crowley said. “It’s not.” Fox LA reporter Gigi Graciette then asked Crowley three times: “Did the city of Los Angeles fail you?” After the third time, Crowley responded simply: “Yes.”
One public official who has chosen not to criticize Bass during the crisis is Los Angeles city controller Kenneth Mejia, whose office drew attention to cuts to the firefighting budget in October in a widely circulated chart showing a massive increase in spending on the police department and cuts to other public services including the fire department.
As his work was being cited by critics of the mayor, Mejia, an activist accountant, wrote in a social media post: “As the City’s Accountant, we enact the budget, account for your taxes, & know the details of the City’s finances. We will gladly break down any questions about how all this works. BUT for now, we must focus on ensuring we can get through these catastrophic fires.”
Officials estimate the Palisades fire wiped away at least 5,000 structures, including many homes in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, where mansions lining the yellow beaches were hollowed out and homes in the neighborhoods’ canyons reduced to dust.
Further east near Altadena, the streets, too, were littered with fallen branches while entire blocks of homes are simply gone. In some areas, the destruction appeared almost random, one resident said, with one house leveled while a neighboring still stood.
The dead include four men who were unable to leave or had stayed behind to defend their homes in Altadena, a community near Pasadena that is home to working- and middle-class families, including many Black residents living there for generations. Two of them were Anthony Mitchell, a 67-year-old amputee, and his son, Justin, who had cerebral palsy. They were waiting for an ambulance to come when the flames roared through, Mitchell’s daughter, Hajime White, told the Washington Post.
“He was not going to leave his son behind. No matter what,” White said. White – who lives in Warren, Arkansas, and is Justin’s step-sister – said her father called her on Wednesday morning and said they had to evacuate from approaching flames. “Then he said: ‘I’ve got to go – the fire’s in the yard,’” she said.
In another incident, Shari Shaw told the local media outlet KTLA that she tried to get her 66-year-old brother, Victor Shaw, to evacuate but he wanted to stay and fight the fire. His body was found with a garden hose in his hand.
Rodney Nickerson died in his bed in his Altadena home. The 82-year-old had lived through numerous fires and felt that he would be OK waiting it out at home, his daughter, Kimiko Nickerson, told KTLA.
Briana Navarro, who lived in Altadena with her grandmother, Erliene Kelley, told NBC News that Kelley had died there after deciding not to evacuate the home she had lived in for more than 40 years with the rest of the family. “We made the choice to evacuate on Tuesday night, however my grandmother decided she wanted to stay”, Navarro wrote in a GoFundMe post. “After we left, I asked my dad to go to the house to check on her … and again, she said she was going to stay at home. She said ‘It’s in God’s hands.’”
CNN reported that Annette Rossilli, who was 85, died in the Palisades fire after refusing to leave her home and pets, according to Luxe Homecare, a company that provided in-home care to her three times a week.
Officials have said they expect the death toll to rise.
Winds were likely to diminish on Friday afternoon, the NWS said, but warned that an “extended period of elevated to potentially critical fire weather conditions are in the forecast for Sunday through Wednesday”.
While the cause of the fires has yet to be determined, the New York Times reported that power lines near the Eaton and Palisades fires had not been turned off before those blazes started, “which energy experts said was concerning because electrical equipment has often ignited infernos during periods of high wind in California and elsewhere”.
Officials said on Friday afternoon that they had some success in battling the Kenneth fire, which ignited on Thursday and grew to 1,000 acres. About 400 firefighters remained at the location overnight to guard against the fire spreading, and it was about 50% contained by Friday.
Firefighting efforts in such tough conditions, with effectively no rain for months and none forecast in the days ahead, have stretched crews and left the country’s second-largest city reeling.
The largest of the fires burning in the LA area, the Palisades fire, obliterated neighbourhoods in the scenic hilltops. According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection website, that blaze has burned over 21,300 acres and been only 8% “contained”.
Containment, according to the Western Fire Chiefs Association, refers to a “control line” around a portion of the fire that flames should not be able to cross. So if a wildfire is described as 25% contained, then firefighters have created control lines – usually wide trenches – around 25% of the fire’s perimeter. Once a fire is 100% contained, firefighters can begin extinguishing it.
To the east, the Eaton fire near Pasadena has burned more than 5,000 structures – a term that includes homes, apartment buildings, businesses, outbuildings and vehicles – across nearly 14,000 acres, and is just 3% contained.
The Hurst fire in the hills above Sylmar, which threatened the San Fernando Valley, was about 37% contained on Friday morning and firefighters reported that they had “successfully contained the fire north of the I-210 Foothill Freeway, establishing control lines”.
The Los Angeles fire department lifted an evacuation order in Granada Hills, north-west of downtown Los Angeles, on Friday afternoon, after “firefighters combined with the aggressive attack by LAFD air ops” swiftly brought the Archer fire, which broke out on Friday morning, under control before any structures were damaged.
Human-caused climate breakdown is supercharging extreme weather across the world, including wildfires. In California, the fire season now begins earlier and ends later.
More than 150,000 people remained under evacuation orders, and the fires have consumed about 57 sq miles, an area larger than the city of San Francisco.
At least 20 arrests have been made for looting. Officials have imposed a mandatory curfew in evacuation zones as well as in the city of Santa Monica, which is next to Pacific Palisades.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
