Fanned by violent winds, several fires have raged around Los Angeles since Tuesday and caused significant damage, particularly in the north of the megacity on the west coast of the United States.
Published on 09/01/2025 15:28
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Jérôme Bonnafoux, spokesperson for the National Federation of French Firefighters, described the Los Angeles fire on Thursday, January 9, as “catastrophic”. The out-of-control fires raging around Los Angeles threatened the Hollywood district on Thursday, which was being evacuated, and caused scenes of chaos in the second-largest city in the United States, killing five people so far.
The winds were blowing Wednesday at 165 km/h, underlines the firefighter, which represents an intensity “huge” which is added “to a significant drought with high temperatures and above all no water”. All the criteria are therefore met, according to him, for the fire to be “out of control”. “The work of firefighters is complicated”he assures. The spokesperson explains that without water, “we therefore have to bring tanker trucks from other cities”.
“There, fortunately, the wind died downcontinues Jérôme Bonnafoux. “We must hope that emergency services are able to contain the fire and protect homes, without controlling it because it will take several weeks to control it.” The spokesperson insists on the importance of the wind, when it blows so hard, “we have bursts of fire, there are tree twigs burning, which will be transported and which will set fire a few hundred meters or even a few km further”.
A situation which requires emergency services to “constantly rethinking the system and redeploying”. In addition to the wind, adds Jérôme Bonnafoux, “the difficulty is that the fire has entered the city”. “For rescue, we also have to manage all that, including evacuation.”
“It’s not the first timerecalls the spokesperson. For more than ten years, California has been the scene of several forest fires of unprecedented scale. And the difficulty on site, he adds, in the United States but in particular in California, “we have a forest-house interface with the addition of houses which are mostly made of wood”.
