Officials said Friday morning that they had made a small step toward containing the two largest fires that have devastated Los Angeles and more substantial progress in curbing three others, allowing them to rescind evacuation orders for some residents.
That headway remains tenuous. As of Friday afternoon, six wildfires were burning across Los Angeles County, including a fresh one that had ignited just hours earlier.
Melted appliances are seen in the charred ruins of a house burned by the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California. Photo / AFP
While the winds that have ripped across the bone-dry region are set to abate later Friday, the respite could be fleeting, with wind speeds forecast to increase again this weekend. About 153,000 people are still subject to evacuation orders, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said.
“We are doing everything we can to get the situation under control,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told reporters Friday morning. “That is our number one job, to protect people’s homes, to protect people’s businesses.”
The city was already working on a plan to “aggressively rebuild,” Bass said. But as residents reached the end of a catastrophic week, it was clear that Los Angeles would never be the same: At least 10,000 structures have been damaged, whole neighbourhoods razed and landmarks incinerated.
Family members embrace while viewing their burned home during the Eaton fire in the Altadena area of Los Angeles county, California. Photo / AFP
Analysts believe the fires could be the costliest in US history, estimating the total economic losses at US$50-60 billion ($90-107 billion).
The human toll could mount in the days ahead, officials said, as rescue workers begin the work of searching the smouldering ruins for the missing. The confirmed victims include an 82 year old who was a devoted church volunteer, as well as a 67-year-old amputee who lived with a son in his early 20s with cerebral palsy. Both father and son were killed.
As the fires continued to rage, officials pledged to find out what started them and examine the response to the disaster. California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) called Friday for an investigation into why hydrants lost pressure or even ran dry as firefighters and residents tried to extinguish the blazes.
Newsom also extended an invitation to President-elect Donald Trump to visit California to see the devastation wrought by the wildfires. In a letter to Trump, Newsom noted his gratitude for President Joe Biden’s swift approval of a major disaster declaration, and said he hoped that type of cooperation would continue with the incoming administration.
“We must not politicise human tragedy or spread disinformation from the sidelines,” Newsom wrote.
By Friday morning, authorities said they had started to limit the spread of the two largest fires that had burned almost unchecked since Tuesday.
Cars belonging to the Altadena Auto Center dealership destroyed by the Eaton Fire remain parked in a lot, in Altadena in Los Angeles. Photo / AFP
The Palisades Fire was 8% contained, and the Eaton Fire was 3% contained, fire officials said. The percentage reflects how much of a blaze is surrounded by a perimeter that the fire cannot jump, even if it continues to burn.
The smaller Hurst and Kenneth fires were each more than a third contained, and the evacuation orders in those areas of the city were lifted, officials said.
The next 48 hours will be critical, as gusting winds subside and firefighting personnel and equipment pour into the region from as far away as Colorado, Quebec and Mexico. There is no rain in the forecast, which means no relief for a region suffering from severe drought.
A scant 0.07cm of rain has fallen at Los Angeles International Airport since October 1, according to NOAA data, the lowest amount on record. The average rainfall in that period is 12.7cm.
Meanwhile, city officials scrambled to determine the cause of erroneous evacuation alerts that rattled millions of residents in a region already on edge. One alert telling people to flee was sent across Los Angeles County on Thursday when it was intended only for those near the Kenneth Fire in the city’s West Hills.
Kevin McGowan, the director of the office of emergency management for Los Angeles County, apologised for the errors, saying he understood the situation was “extremely frustrating, painful and scary”.
Burned homes are seen during the Palisades fire in the Malibu area of Los Angeles county, California. Photo / AFP
Across the city, schools remained closed and an acrid haze covered the sky. Police said they would enforce a curfew starting at 6pm in evacuation zones to deter looters.
Those whose homes had burned began the arduous task of piecing together their next steps. At Westwood Recreation Centre, where a gymnasium had been converted into a shelter, Phillip Cohen, 68, said he had nowhere to go.
“I’ve lost everything,” Cohen said. “I have no property, only the clothes I’ve been wearing for a few days, nothing.”
A retired educator who lives on his pension, Cohen hopes to return to his condo in Pacific Palisades. But it could take a month to determine if the building – which is scorched but standing – is salvageable or will be condemned. Meanwhile, a daunting to-do list looms: calls to his homeowners association, insurance agencies and lawyers.
David Eagle and his family fled their Palisades Highlands home on Tuesday with little more than a bag of basics. For two days, they had no idea whether their house of 22 years would survive a blaze that seemed to be swallowing their whole world.
“We never thought when we evacuated that it would take more than a day or so,” said Eagle, 70, a former TV writer and producer who now runs an electric-vehicle brokerage company. “We had no idea the fire would grow to the intensity it did.”
On Thursday, Eagle got word: The house – improbably – was still there. Eagle has spent the past 24 hours trying to get into his neighbourhood to see the home for himself and to pick up belongings he left behind in the rush to flee.
During a week when so much has been out of his hands, he has tried to focus on the quotidian things he can control, if only authorities would allow him past their barricades and back up his street, a growing frustration among residents eager to access their property. “The thing that keeps bothering me when I’m trying to sleep,” he said, “is all the things I can’t get to that I need to do.”
The scale of the destruction has left institutions reeling. Julia Milton is an engineer at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. Firefighters managed to protect the laboratory from the advancing inferno, and Milton’s nearby apartment building is still standing. But more than 150 of her colleagues lost their homes, according to a post by the laboratory’s director on X.
They include a woman who gave birth just three days before the fire; a family of four that was travelling when the blaze broke out and couldn’t save anything from their home; and a mother of three children who works in the laboratory’s cafe.
