Allison Dinner / EPA
Fire in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles
State of emergency declared. Winds reach 160 km/h. Water tanks ran dry after a “dangerous combination”.
At least 5 people died and more than 100 mil were forced to to escape from home in various areas of Los Angeles, where five fires of gigantic proportions have been out of control since Tuesday morning.
Black clouds of smoke block the sun over large swaths of the city and ash falls even in neighborhoods several kilometers from the affected areas. Six schools were closed and recreation centers were turned into shelters for those who had to be evacuated.
Authorities are telling local populations to don’t wait – you have to leave the house immediately.
This morning, another fire broke out in the Hollywood Hills, also in Los Angeles, where there are large mansions and celebrities live.
Some Portuguese who live in Los Angeles had to evacuate and are staying with friends. Others are on alert because they live near areas where the fires are spreading. Many people decided not to send their children to school due to warnings about poor air quality.
Last night there were more than 300 thousand homes without electricity and it has already been declared state of emergency by Los Angeles County and California Governor Gavin Newsom, who got the green light from President Joe Biden for federal aid to fight the fires.
“The situation in Los Angeles is highly dangerous and rapidly evolving,” said Newsom, at a joint press conference with Joe Biden, who traveled to California.
“President Biden’s quick action is a tremendous help to California as we do everything we can to protect residents with significant federal, local and state resources.”
But the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, is about to be one of reviews for being out of the country and having cut the firefighting department’s budget by 17 million dollars.
Os firemen have not yet managed to contain any part of the fires, which have an unpredictable path due to the winds strong, which reached 160 km/h.
The fires are located in different parts of the county, all near mountainous areas: Pacific Palisades, Altadena and Pasadena, Sylmar, Acton and Ventura.
The first fire started in the wealthy neighborhood of Pacific Palisades, located between the Santa Monica Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, and spread quickly because of the Santa Ana winds, which reached the strength of a Category 2 hurricane during the early hours of the morning.
These seasonal winds come from the interior desert areas and are particularly dangerous due to the dry vegetation, low humidity and chronic drought situation.
It reinforces the “dangerous combination” that is causing this scale of fires: a unusually dry weather and strong winds.
These are the worst winds since 2011 and the fire in Pacific Palisades, an area known for luxury mansions and celebrities, is already the most destructive in LA history. It consumed more than 6,000 acres and a thousand buildings, completely destroying some blocks – including Palisades High High School, which was featured in several Hollywood films.
Hundreds of people who tried to leave the area had to abandon their cars and flee on foot, leaving an apocalyptic scene on Sunset Boulevard.
Accommodation chain Airbnb announced an emergency program that will allow displaced people to stay in homes for free for a week, and Planet Fitness gyms are opening their doors for those affected by the blackout to charge devices and shower.
Despair and criticism
Makeshift beds and blankets provided by the American Red Cross are all that survivors of the fires in Pacific Palisades and Malibu have after last night’s devastation, with mandatory evacuations across the city.
“They told us to leave at nine at night,” she told Lusa Ray, who escaped the fire with her husband and teenage daughter. “At five in the morning our house was in ashes”, he added.
They left in pajamas and sweaters, with their cell phones, and only had time to save their pet, a ten-year-old pygmy goat.
“Today [quarta-feira] let’s go sleep not car,” said Ray, outside El Camino Real High School in Woodland Hills, which has been transformed into a shelter.
The pygmy goat cannot sleep inside, so they will have to stay in the car.
“We don’t have the mind for anything else. We’ll look for another place tomorrow,” Ray shared.
The house, in Malibu, is completely destroyed. They had lived there for 20 years and had been through other fires, but had never seen anything so destructive.
Ray was emotional but also angry with the firefighterswho said they did nothing to save the houses.
“They didn’t let us use high pressure hoses because they said there was little water”, he said. “They wanted to use it in Pacific Palisades“, he accused.
Also according to, three water tanks and some fire hydrants dried up precisely in Pacific Palisades, because of so much demand for water, complicating firefighting efforts. Experts claim that the local firefighting system was not built to fight a large fire like this.
There are several active fires in Los Angeles, the most serious of which is in the Pacific Palisades, next to the Santa Monica Mountains, where a thousand buildings and six thousand hectares have burned.
This is already the most destructive fire in city historywhere there are seasonal fires due to strong winds, low humidity and dry vegetation.
In the last few hours, the inhabitants of Los Angeles began to receive notices to boil the water, due to the intensity of use by firefighters, which is reducing the pressure in the pipes and can make its consumption dangerous.
As Mimi Teller, spokesperson for the North American Red Cross, told Lusa, the shelters currently have 94 people in Westwood and 12 in Pacoima.
Lusa was at the Woodland Hills shelter, where employees counted nine people since the fires started.
With a state of emergency declared by California Governor Gavin Newsom, the district decided to close all schools in the county due to poor air quality, falling ash and winds that remain strong.
The Critics Choice Association has decided to postpone its film and television awards ceremony, which was scheduled for Santa Monica on Sunday, January 12.
