By Hannah Fry, Grace Toohey, Noah Goldberg, Richard Winton, and Rong-Gong Lin II, Los Angeles Times (TNS)
Los Angeles Southern California will have two days of hazardous winds after a brief respite, which officials worry might intensify existing flames and start new ones.
In anticipation of a windstorm that is predicted to affect a large portion of the region, including Ventura County, the San Fernando Valley, a portion of Los Angeles, and the San Gabriel Valley, with wind gusts ranging from 45 mph to 70 mph, firefighters spent Monday drawing containment lines around the Eaton and Palisades fires and completing preparations.
An abatement of winds over the past several days has allowed officials to make progress, allowing an airborne campaign to prevent the Palisades fire from reaching Brentwood and Encino. Although it’s unknown how much the weather will permit, authorities aim to keep aircraft up Tuesday.
At a press conference on Monday, Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley stated, “We are not yet in the clear, and we must not let our guard down.”
According to Rose Schoenfeld, a National Weather Service meteorologist, “one of the loudest ways that we can shout is when the National Weather Service warns of a particularly dangerous situation.”
Schoenfeld stated that the high fire weather and wind conditions are still present.
As of Monday, the Palisades fire was 14% contained and had burned over 23,700 acres. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, said that the Eaton fire, which has burned over 14,100 acres, was 33% contained.
Emergency personnel and firefighters from Mexico have traveled to Los Angeles to assist in the combat. 72 firefighters joined thousands of others fighting the fires on Saturday, according to Governor Gavin Newsom.
The California National Guard is also deploying an extra 1,000 personnel to the fire-ravaged city of Los Angeles.According to the governor’s office, they will increase the number of Guard members in the area to roughly 2,500.
President Joe Biden announced on Monday that hundreds of federal employees and planes have also been sent to California to assist in firefighting efforts.
Approximately 89,000 people are in locations where evacuation advisories have been issued, and 92,000 individuals are still under evacuation orders.
Firefighters had prepared extensively for the most recent harsh weather event, according to Crowley.
“The Los Angeles City Fire Department has optimized our response and resource capabilities as of right now. I have pre-positioned engine strike teams and task forces strategically, and they are committed to responding quickly to any new fire that occurs in the city,” Crowley stated.
Fire control lines surrounding the Eaton and Palisades fires are being strengthened, dry brush is being removed from buildings that are still standing, and resources are being staged in locations where additional fires can start. Additionally, more engines, firemen, helicopters, bulldozers, and water tenders have been prepositioned throughout Southern California by the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.
In the worst-case scenario, crews are getting ready for the possibility that strong winds may make it impossible for firefighting planes to strategically dump retardant around the perimeters of the fires.
“We’re making urgent preparations because the National Weather Service is predicting winds that are almost hurricane force,” stated Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. Doing everything we can to save lives is my top priority and everyone else’s top priority.
According to Los Angeles County Fire Department spokesperson A.J. Lester, firefighters are concentrating on putting out any hot spots on the perimeter to lessen the likelihood that the winds will pick up smoldering embers and carry them into new areas, even though gusts are not predicted to be as severe in the Eaton fire area as they are elsewhere in the county.
Crews are aiming to prevent the fire from encroaching on the ridgeline on the north end of the fire, where winds are expected to be among the most dangerous on Tuesday and Wednesday, he added.
In that case, the fire would be on the opposite side, going downhill toward neighboring settlements, including La Ca ada Flintridge. “Lester said.” The Palisades fire is undergoing similar efforts.
The verified death toll from the Palisades and Eaton fires increased to 25 on Monday. According to Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna, the Palisades fire claimed eight lives, while the Eaton fire in Altadena claimed seventeen.
According to officials, there are currently 29 missing persons reports from both fires, all of them are adults.
The death toll is certain to continue to rise, officials warn. According to Luna, grid searches and cadaver dogs are being used in the Eaton and Palisades fire zones for search and recovery efforts.
“Unfortunately, we’re coming across the remains of individual community members every day that we’re doing this,” Luna added.
Among the deadliest fires in California’s recent history were the Palisades and Eaton fires. The Camp fire, which destroyed the Butte County town of Paradise in 2018 and claimed 85 lives, is still the state’s deadliest wildfire. The 1933 Griffith Park fire, which claimed 29 lives, was the second-deadliest. It was followed by the 1991 Oakland-Berkeley Hills fire, which claimed 25 lives, and the 2017 Tubbs fire in Napa and Sonoma counties, which claimed 22 lives.
The number of structures burned has not yet been finalized, but the flames are already among the most catastrophic the state has seen.
Although inspection teams have only inspected around 30% of the Eaton fire’s footprint, damage assessments have shown that 1,902 structures were destroyed. Although structures can include residences, commercial buildings, minor outbuildings and sheds, and even automobiles, officials estimate that 7,000 structures were either damaged or destroyed.
According to officials, around 5,300 buildings have been destroyed by the Palisades fire.
According to Cal Fire, if those figures continue, the Palisades and Eaton fires would rank among the top four most damaging wildfires in the history of modern California.
Authorities have been trying to keep people out of the fire zones because they claim that people are coming there to break into homes that have been evacuated and do other crimes. 34 persons have been taken into custody by the authorities, including a burglary suspect who was purportedly dressed as a firefighter.
According to Luna, of those detained, 30 were captured in the Eaton fire zone and four in the Palisades fire zone.
Investigators have concentrated on an electrical transmission tower in Eaton Canyon as they attempt to identify the cause of the Eaton fire, which destroyed communities in and around Altadena. Before the fatal Eaton fire raced down the canyon toward houses, homeowners’ early photographs and videos showed what looked to be the first flames blazing at the base of a Southern California Edison electrical transmission tower.
Officials from Edison have stated thus far that they do not think their electrical equipment was at fault.The utility was the target of four lawsuits on Monday.
Fire departments are looking into whether toppled Southern California Edison electrical equipment may have contributed to the 800-acre Hurst fire near Sylmar, according to company representatives. As of Monday, evacuation orders had been lifted and the fire that started on January 7 near Diamond Road in Sylmar was 95% contained, however firefighting was still ongoing.
In a report released on Friday, the utility stated that a downed conductor was found at a tower close to the fire, although it was unsure if the damage saw happened before or after the fire started.
The cause of the Palisades fire is still being investigated, but officials told the Los Angeles Times on condition of anonymity that it seems to have human origins. The famed Temescal Ridge route where an earlier fire had started has been the center of attention in recent days.
Weather officials caution that this week’s fire weather might lead to extreme fire behavior, which can turn little blazes into raging infernos, even if it is not predicted to be as bad as the historic windstorms that fuelled the Palisades and Eaton fires last week.
With winds from the east spreading fires to the west, this wind event will be more typical for Santa Ana. Amountain wave wind, which happens when gusts quickly descend mountain slopes and then intensify when they strike a level terrain, made last week’s windstorms harsher. Short bursts of powerful, deadly winds were created by the occurrence; gusts of up to 100 mph were recorded close to Altadena. According to Schoenfeld, last week’s winds were mostly from the north and impacted places that don’t usually see high winds during Santa Ana occurrences.
Wide swaths of Ventura County, including the cities of Ventura, Simi Valley, and Fillmore; the northern San Fernando Valley, including Porter Ranch and San Fernando; the western Santa Monica Mountains and the Malibu area; and the Grapevine section of Interstate 5 comprise the comparatively smaller area covered by the particularly dangerous situation warning.
Southern California has not received much rain this winter, heightening concerns before the winds pick up. Since October 1, downtown Los Angeles has received just 0.16 inches of rain, which is practically nothing in comparison to the 5.23 inches that are typically received at this stage of the water year.
Schoenfeld stated that compared to a normal red flag fire weather warning, there will be a greater chance of toppled trees and electrical lines. Power outages for public safety are more likely to occur in the vicinity of the extremely hazardous scenario.
About 17,600 Los Angeles Department of Water and Power customers in high fire risk areas including Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, Sylmar and Encino are without power, the agency said Monday.
More than 25,000 Edison customers in Los Angeles County were without power Monday afternoon, and an additional 122,000 customers in the county could have their power shut off in the coming days, according to the utility.
This is the fourth warning of a particularly dangerous situation issued since autumn. Major, destructive fires followed each of the three earlier warnings: the 4,037-acre Franklin fire, which spread quickly in Malibu and destroyed 20 buildings in December; the 19,904-acre Mountain fire in Ventura County, which destroyed over 240 buildings in November; and the Palisades and Eaton fires, which occurred last week.
A conventional red flag warning alerting about critical fire weather conditions has already been in effect since Saturday for large swaths of Southern California and will continue until Wednesday evening. The red flag warning covers a much larger area than the particularly dangerous situation.
These next few days are crucial in our fighting of the existing fires and also preventing any new fires, said Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger. Thank you for taking it seriously.
(Times staff writers Rebecca Ellis, Clara Harter, Salvador Hernandez, Faith Pinho, Jenny Jarvie, Laura J. Nelson, Kevin Rector, Ruben Vives and Julia Wick contributed to this report.)
2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit atlatimes.com. Tribune Content Agency, LLC is the distributor.
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