Los Angeles wildfires: Whole neighbourhoods burned to the ground as fires rage around city. Video / AFP
Massive wildfires that engulfed whole neighbourhoods and displaced thousands in Los Angeles remained totally uncontained Thursday, authorities said, as US National Guard soldiers readied to hit the streets to help quell disorder.
Swaths of the United States' second-largest city lay in ruins, with smoke blanketing the sky and an acrid smell pervading almost every building.
There have been at least 10 fire-related deaths, the Los Angeles' medical examiner said in a statement this evening.
The death toll is likely to rise, LA Country Sheriff Robert Luna told reporters earlier today.
“It’s hard to describe how bad this is,” said a BNO News reporter, commenting on aerial views of thousands of homes destroyed in the Pacific Pallisades neighbourhood.
Amid the chaos, looting had broken out, with numerous arrests made, officials said, and hundreds of soldiers were set to be deployed.
A motorcyclist stops to look at a burning home during the Eaton fire in the Altadena area of Los Angeles county. Photo / AFP
“The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has officially requested the support of the California National Guard for both fires,” Sheriff Robert Luna told reporters.
“For the last 24 hours or so, we have had approximately 400 National Guard members throughout the state ready to support us.
“We expect that they may be on site as soon as tonight,” he said, adding Governor Gavin Newsom had approved the request.
Luna said his officers were patrolling evacuation zones and would arrest anyone who was not supposed to be there.
With such a huge area scorched by the fires, which are ravaging the well-to-do Pacific Palisades and another area around Altadena, evacuees feared not enough was being done.
Some were taking matters into their own hands.
“We’re so stressed about this looting happening all around that my neighbours were on watch all last night for several houses in the neighbourhood,” said one man whose house was one of just a handful left standing on a burned-out Altadena street.
“I’m supposed to take over for them tonight,” said the man, who did not want to give his name.
A sunset-to-sunrise curfew has been declared in evacuated areas of the coastal city of Santa Monica, and Luna said more overnight curfews would be coming in the fire zones.
Her mother’s home had been spared by the inferno’s seemingly random and chaotic destruction. Some neighbours' houses, often side-by-side with those razed to the ground, had similarly survived.
Through the blackened remains of devastated homes, gloomy vistas of the surrounding fire-ravaged mountains could be glimpsed through the smoke.
“The view now is of death and destruction,” she told AFP. “I don’t know if anyone can come back for a while.”
The same fire flared up again near the summit of Mount Wilson, home to a historic observatory and vital communication towers and equipment.
Multi-million dollar homes
Fast-moving flames fanned by powerful winds of up to 160 km/h since Tuesday have levelled more than 2000 structures across the city, many of them multi-million dollar homes.
Los Angeles fire chief Kirstin Crowley said a preliminary estimate of destroyed structures in Pacific Palisades was “in the thousands.”
Among those who died was 66-year-old Victor Shaw, whose sister said he had ignored pleas to leave as the fire swept through Altadena because he wanted to protect their home.
“When I went back in and yelled out his name, he didn’t reply back,” Shari Shaw said.
“I had to get out because the embers were so big and flying like a firestorm that I had to save myself.”
Shaw’s body was found by a friend on the driveway of his razed home, a garden hose in his hand.
I have spent a lot of time in Los Angeles.
It is an extraordinary, beautiful place.
Watching L.A. burn is extremely painful.
The footage is nothing short of apocalyptic.
I am deeply sad for the people of this wonderful city.
“We have lost practically everything; the flames have consumed all our dreams,” he told AFP.
US President Joe Biden, who cancelled a trip to Italy this week over the crisis, is due to give public remarks about the fires later Thursday.
His incoming successor Donald Trump meanwhile blamed California governor Gavin Newsom for the devastation and calling on the Democrat to resign. “This is all his fault,” Trump said on his Truth social platform.
Climate crisis
Wildfires are part of life in the US West and play a vital role in nature.
But scientists say human-caused climate change is altering weather patterns.
Southern California had two decades of drought followed by two exceptionally wet years, which sparked furious vegetative growth, leaving the region packed with fuel and primed to burn.
Meteorologist Daniel Swain said the fierce winds - which have gusted up to 160km/h - are stronger than the usual seasonal Santa Ana winds but are not unexpected.
“The winds are the driver, but the real catalyst ... is this incredible antecedent dryness,” he said.
“That’s something that we haven’t seen in records going back to the 1800s.”
