Once one of the most desirable residential areas in Los Angeles, it now resembles “charred war zone”, deplores the New York Post. Drone images taken on Wednesday January 8 but only released this Friday show hundreds of homes in the very chic Pacific Palisades completely reduced to ashes after the fires that ravaged the surrounding areas of Los Angeles. “Some ruins are still smoking”, notices the Los Angeles Times, which adds: “reduced to smoking ashes, this familiar landscape has something lunar”.
Palisades fire broke out Tuesday morning “near Piedra Morada Drive” specifies the Californian newspaper. The gusty winds that blew through the city allowed it to quickly expand westward to Malibu and eastward toward Brentwood, “leaving behind widespread devastation.” For the Los Angeles Times the fire completely redesigned the landscape of these beautiful Californian neighborhoods: “All the pretty houses and million-dollar villas that once lined the coastline are gone,” some even “collapsed on the beaches” under the heat of the flames.
Over the next two days, six more fires broke out across Los Angeles County, adds The Guardian. One of them, now under control, had notably forced numerous evacuations around Hollywood. Tens of thousands of hectares have already gone up in smoke.
According to the New York Postthese fires led to the evacuation of 130,000 people. A final human toll shows ten deaths, but it “expected to get heavier as rescuers search the disaster areas,” estimates the Guardian. The authorities have also warned that ““strengthening winds could further fan the flames of the five fires, three of which remained completely out of control on Thursday,” concludes the New York Post.
