United States: Fires ravage the surroundings of Los Angeles, two dead – INTERNATIONAL – News of the day

January 8, 2025Reuters

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Violent forest fires raging around Los Angeles on Wednesday killed at least two people and forced more than 70,000 people to evacuate, local authorities said.

The most serious fire, located in Pacific Palisades, a Los Angeles neighborhood where many celebrities reside, devastated more than 2,000 hectares between the cities of Malibu and Santa Monica, officials said.

More than 1,000 structures were destroyed, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said at a news conference.

Two other fires, near Pasadena and in the San Fernando Valley, were also spreading rapidly inland, authorities said.

The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a fire alert from Tuesday to Thursday for most of Los Angeles County after a prolonged dry spell.

Witnesses reported that several homes were engulfed in flames as they fled the hills of Topanga Canyon, where the fire spread.

Thousands of people tried to flee the flames by car on Wednesday morning, causing traffic jams, while motorists had to abandon their vehicles as the fire approached.

“People left their cars on Palisades Drive. The fire burns the side of the hill. The palm trees – everything is going away,” said Cindy Festa, a resident who was evacuating the scene by car.

Firefighters, who used water bombing planes to fight the flames, failed to control the early blaze and California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency.

The state has deployed personnel, fire trucks and planes elsewhere in Southern California because of the fire risk in the rest of the region, he added. California obtained federal grants to put out the three fires.

A second fire, called the Eaton Fire, broke out later near Pasadena and grew to more than 800 hectares, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) said. Two deaths have been reported there, but authorities say they have no further details.

Firefighters then indicated that a third fire, called the Hurst Fire, had broken out in Sylmar, in the San Fernando Valley, northwest of Los Angeles. The fire, which spread over 200 hectares, led to the evacuation of some nearby residents, according to Cal Fire.

About 188,000 homes and businesses in Los Angeles County were without power Wednesday, according to data from PowerOutage.us.

“We are facing a historic natural disaster. And I think that can’t be emphasized enough,” Los Angeles County Emergency Management Director Kevin McGowan told reporters.

US President Joe Biden said in a statement that he had offered federal support to fight the fire.

(Reporting Jorge Garcia, Mike Blake and Daniel Cole in Los Angeles, Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, California, with Shubham Kalia, Gursimran Kaur and Kanjyik Ghosh in Bangalore, French version Camille Raynaud and Noémie Naudin, editing by Kate Entringer)