Five dead and thousands displaced as wildfires threaten Los Angeles area
More than 70,000 people have been forced to flee the flames as firefighters struggle to contain the wind-whipped blazes.
At least five people have been killed as a string of wildfires ravage southern California in the United States, buffeted by strong winds.
Tens of thousands of residents have been forced to flee their homes and businesses, in what some speculate could become one of the most expensive conflagrations in US history.
At least six separate fires had been reported by Wednesday afternoon, the largest of which is known as the Palisades Fire, which has scorched 15,832 acres (about 6,400 hectares) of coastal residential area north of Los Angeles.
To the northeast of the city burned another big blaze, the Eaton Fire. It had consumed 10,600 acres (about 4,300 hectares). Four other fires – known as the Woodley, Hurst, Lidia and Olivas fires – had also been declared “emergency incidents” by Cal Fire, the state agency for fire protection.
Cal Fire indicated that no percentage of the five fires had been contained by early Wednesday.
“It’s astounding, what’s happening,” President Joe Biden said from Los Angeles on Wednesday.
He had been in town this week to unveil two new national monuments in California, only to have his plans scuttled by the lashing Santa Ana winds.
Biden, whose term ends in less than two weeks, nodded at the extent of the destruction and the prospect of a long recovery period: “It’s going to be a hell of a long way. It’s going to take time.”
He announced he would sign a federal emergency declaration, and he directed the Department of Defence to deploy its firefighting personnel alongside other federal, state and local agencies.
An estimated 70,000 people have been ordered to evacuate as of Wednesday. Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone estimated at a news conference that at least 1,000 structures have been destroyed since the fires began about 10:30am local time (18:30GMT) on Tuesday.
He added there was a “high number of significant injuries to residents who did not evacuate in addition to first responders who are on the fire line”.
The blazes were the latest sign of the rapid growth of wildfires around the western United States, where the fire season is increasingly year-round, even during the cooler and rainier times.
Frightened residents abandoned their cars on one of the only roads in and out of the upscale Pacific Palisades area, which hugs the coastline north of Los Angeles.
Many fled on foot as the Palisades Fire engulfed an area packed with multimillion-dollar homes in the Santa Monica Mountains. Hollywood celebrities like Mandy Moore and Mark Hamill have been among the evacuees.
Firefighters used bulldozers to push dozens of vehicles to one side, leaving many crumpled with their alarms blaring, to make way for emergency vehicles.
A fire official told television station KTLA that several people were injured, some with burns to faces and hands. One female firefighter reportedly sustained a head injury.
“This morning, we woke up to a dark cloud over all of Los Angeles. But it is darkest for those who are most intimately impacted by these fires. It has been an immensely painful 24 hours,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath told reporters.
Almost 100 elderly residents from a nursing home were evacuated in the city, according to CBS News.
Videos and photos showed elderly residents, many in wheelchairs and on gurneys, crowded onto a smokey and windswept car park as firetrucks and ambulances attended the scene.
Even in downtown Los Angeles, the heavy smoke and threat of spreading flames forced many businesses to close and events to be postponed.
A National Hockey League game (NHL) scheduled for Wednesday evening was bumped, and this Sunday’s Critics Choice Awards, scheduled to unfold in Santa Monica on Sunday, were moved to later this month.
California Governor Gavin Newsom thanked President Biden for approving federal aid to help firefighters respond.
“This means the world to us,” he told Biden at a news conference on Wednesday. “It’s impossible for me to express the level of appreciation and cooperation we received from the White House and this administration.”
Newsom noted the complexity of tackling multiple fires and their ever-expanding impact: “A thousand structures already that have been destroyed; a hundred-plus thousand people that have been evacuated; lives lost; traditions, lifestyles, places torn asunder.”
President-elect Donald Trump, however, blasted Newsom and Biden for their handling of the wildfires. Trump, a Republican set to take office for a second term on January 20, has long sparred with the two Democrats.
“The fires in Los Angeles may go down, in dollar amount, as the worst in the History of our Country,” he wrote on social media. “Let this serve, and be emblematic, of the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the Biden/Newscum Duo. January 20th cannot come fast enough!”
Speaking from the Palisades neighbourhood on Wednesday, Al Jazeera correspondent Rob Reynolds described vast devastation as the wildfires raged on.
“We drove through the Pacific Palisades a short while ago, and it is block after block after block of nothing but ashes and pure devastation,” Reynolds said.
“By some estimates coming out already, the Pacific Palisades part of the fires alone could be among the most destructive and the most expensive in US history.”