Anyone who does not comply with the mandatory curfew may be detained, the official threatened. Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna. You Five fires that are devastating Los Angeles have already caused 10 deaths.
Local authorities announced, this Friday, that the areas affected by the fires that have devastated Los Angeles, in the southwest of the United States, and which have become targets of looting, are under curfew.
“You cannot be in these affected areas. If you are, you may be detained. We are doing this to protect the buildings and homes that people have abandoned because they were told to,” Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said today in a press conference.
Los Angeles has been devastated throughout the week by five different fires, which have already caused 10 deaths and the destruction of around 10,000 buildings, forcing 180,000 people to leave their homes.
Anyone who fails to comply may be prosecuted
Robert Luna reported that the curfew in all areas of mandatory evacuation cowill measure again at 18:00 local time (02:00 Lisbon) for houses that are still intact.
Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman threatened to prosecute anyone who loots, flies drones into fire zones or violates curfew “to the fullest extent of the law.”
“Looting is a despicable crime,” said the prosecutor.
At least 20 arrests have already been made for looting and other thefts in the burned areas, prompting authorities to impose an overnight curfew.
“You cannot be in the affected areas. If you are, you are subject to arrest”, stressed Nathan Hochman.
Almost 36 million have already been burned hectares
On Thursday, a firefighter plane had to be immobilized after being hit by a drone piloted by a civilian, according to the Los Angeles County Fire Department, which said the accident caused no injuries.
Flying a ‘drone’ (unmanned aerial device) while fighting fires is a federal crime.
The largest fire in the area, in Palisades, northwest of the second-largest city in the United States, is ravaging the upscale Pacific Palisades neighborhood, where more than 5,300 homes and other buildings have burned, at the same time another fire is destroying Altadena , an eastern suburb of Los Angeles.
In total, the fires have already burned almost 36,000 hectares, the equivalent of 145 square kilometers (km2).
On Thursday afternoon, the Kenneth Fire, for which evacuation orders have since been lifted, started in the San Fernando Valley and moved into neighboring Ventura County, but a large and aggressive fire response prevented the flames from spreading. propagate.
The causes of the largest fires are still being identified.
AccuWeather, a company that provides data on the impact of extreme weather phenomena, on Thursday raised the estimate of damage and economic losses from the fires to between 135 and 150 billion dollars (between 131 and 146 billion euros, at current exchange rates). .
