California wildfires live updates: Los Angeles death toll rises to 11 as governor orders water investigation

3 weeks ago 5

LA wildfires death toll rises to 11

The death toll from the Los Angeles wildfires has risen to 11, according to the LA county medical examiner’s office.

Five of those deaths were due to the Palisades fire, and the other six resulted from the Eaton fire.

Officials said they expected that number to rise as cadaver dogs go through leveled neighborhoods to assess the devastation to an area larger than San Francisco.

Five of those killed in the Eaton fire have been identified by relatives so far:

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Mexico is sending a team of firefighters to support California’s battle against the wildfires raging in Los Angeles.

“We are going to send a support team to Los Angeles,” Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum said Friday morning. The “solidarity team” would consist of firefighters from the country’s forestry department and military.

“We are going to provide support,” she added. “Not only because the people and government of Mexico have always been generous, but also because there are many Mexicans in this area of the United States.”

California governor Gavin Newsom confirmed the news in a social media post Friday afternoon: “Firefighters from Mexico are en route to the #EatonFire — joining more than 10,000 personnel already on the ground. California is deeply grateful for President @ClaudiaShein’s support as we work to suppress the Los Angeles wildfires.”

The Walt Disney Company pledged $15m to initial and immediate response and rebuilding efforts after the Los Angeles wildfires in a press release on Friday. The funds will be directed towards groups like the American Red Cross, the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation and the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank.

“Walt Disney came to Los Angeles with little more than his limitless imagination,” CEO Bob Iger said. “As this tragedy continues to unfold, The Walt Disney Company is committed to supporting our community and our employees as we all work together to recover and rebuild from this unbelievable devastation.”

LA wildfires death toll rises to 11

The death toll from the Los Angeles wildfires has risen to 11, according to the LA county medical examiner’s office.

Five of those deaths were due to the Palisades fire, and the other six resulted from the Eaton fire.

Officials said they expected that number to rise as cadaver dogs go through leveled neighborhoods to assess the devastation to an area larger than San Francisco.

Five of those killed in the Eaton fire have been identified by relatives so far:

California governor Gavin Newsom has invited president-elect Donald Trump to visit the state and tour the devastation wrought by the Los Angeles wildfires. In a post on social media, Newsom shared a copy of the letter addressed to Trump:

“It was just six years ago that we toured the devastation of the Camp Fire in the town of Paradise, the deadliest wildfire in California’s history,” Newsom wrote. “Now, California is again facing one of the most destructive fires in our history.”

“As you prepare to assume the presidency once more, I invite you to come to California again – to meet with the Americans affected by these fires, see the devastation firsthand, and join me and others in thanking the heroic firefighters and first responders who are putting their lives on the line.”

Here’s Trump’s visit in 2018:

Good afternoon – here in northern California the skies are clear as we think about our friends and colleagues weathering heavy smoke, evacuation orders and continued unknowns just a few hours south. I’m Cecilia Nowell taking over our live coverage of the Los Angeles wildfires into the evening.

Firefighters made progress containing the Hurst fire this afternoon. The fire, which encompasses 771 acres near the Sylmar neighborhood of Los Angeles, was 70% contained around 3pm, according to Wildfire.gov.

On social media, mayor Karen Bass said that all evacuation warnings for regions impacted by the Hurst fire – as well as the smaller, 19-acre Archer fire in the Granada Hills neighborhood – had been lifted.

Summary of the day so far

At least 10 people have been killed in the fires raging in the Los Angeles area, with an estimated 10,000 homes and structures reduced to ash and rubble.

Here’s a recap of the latest developments:

Here’s how the largest fires in LA county stand: the Palisades fire, the largest of the fires, has burned more than 20,000 acres and is 8% contained. The Eaton fire, in the Pasadena area, has burned more than 13,600 acres and is at 3% contained, it has damaged or destroyed more than 7,000 structures. The Kenneth fire has burned about 1,000 acres and is 35% contained. The Lidia fire has burned 395 acres and is 75% contained. The Hurst fire has burned 771 acres and is 37% contained.
About 166,800 Los Angeles county residents remain under evacuation warnings, and 100,053 residents are under evacuation orders. Approximately 57,830 structures are at risk from the fires.
A curfew is in effect from 6pm to 6am local time for the Palisades and Eaton fire areas in all mandatory evacuation zones. “You can’t not be in these affected areas. If you are, you are subject to arrest,” LA sheriff Robert Luna said.
A red flag warning will expire at 6pm PT on Friday but a new warning is expected to be issued on Monday, when windy conditions in the Los Angeles area are forecast to return.
At least 10 people have been killed in the fires but the true death toll is not known. At a briefing on Friday, Joe Biden said the loss of life would likely increase, “whether significantly or not, we don’t know yet”.
California governor Gavin Newsom has called for an independent investigation into “deeply troubling” reports that some hydrants lost water pressure in the midst of the wildfires.
Joe Biden described the fires as the “worst in California history” and said “we still got a long way to go.” He said police and National Guard members have been deployed to improve security in the areas affected by the wildfires due to looting.
Police have made 18 arrests during the fires, 15 connected to the Eaton fire in the foothills of the Angeles national forest and three arrests in the area of the Palisades fire.
California insurance commissioner Ricardo Lara has issued a moratorium that bars insurers from canceling or non-renewing home policies in the Pacific Palisades and the San Gabriel Valley’s Eaton fire zones.
Los Angeles officials have apologized after residents across the county received erroneous evacuation warnings. People have been urged not to disable the emergency messages.

More than 7,000 structures damaged or destroyed by Eaton fire

Approximately 7,081 structures are believed to have been damaged or destroyed by the Eaton fire, according to an estimate by officials.

The fire has burned 13,956 acres and is a 3% containment, LA fire chief Anthony Marrone said.

The current red flag warning will expire at 6pm PT today but a new warning is expected to be issued on Monday.

Los Angeles fire chief Anthony Marrone said the county “would be prepared” to face the return of the high winds and dry brush conditions.

A red flag warning means warm temperatures are expected to combine with very low humidities and strong winds to create an increased fire danger risk.

Lila Victor, 22, a freelance journalist, from Venice, Los Angeles, has been in touch with the Guardian. She says it’s been stressful to see LA ravaged by the fires but that the community has come together to help each other:

I live in Venice, pretty close to Santa Monica. We haven’t had any actual fires or evacuation orders here, but it’s still been very stressful with all the uncertainty. I’m born and raised in LA, so watching my home town be partly destroyed has been really difficult.

We’ve seen giant clouds of smoke. On Wednesday evening, we were up on my friend’s balcony in Mar Vista and my mom saw this bright orange glow – she thought it was a reflection at first. Then we watched as it just expanded so rapidly on the hills in the distance. Later we realized we’d watched the Sunset fire spreading.

I write for a local news site called the Westside Current. On Tuesday, I felt paralyzed, and was asking myself, ‘what can I do to help?’ Then I realized people were posting links online of restaurants that were offering free meals to first responders and evacuees, or were opening their doors to the community – for shelter, wifi, bathrooms, anything. I realized I could be helpful by putting together a list, and keep it updated, so people could find support.

Seeing the community really come together right now – to be there for the people who may need their services, supplies – has been heartwarming. We’ve seen reports of people taking advantage of this horrible situation by looting, but the people rallying together to help each other in the community far outnumber them. To see these little pockets of light is really important.

Sleeping is not easy right now. It’s all so tense. I saw a childhood friend posting online that their home in Palisades – which I used to visit as a child, where I had so many memories – has burned down. And hundreds of thousands are displaced. This has been a real wake-up call for disaster preparedness. Now we’re just gearing up for the next thing that happens.

Three days since the Palisades fire began blazing across Los Angeles, firefighters have begun to contain the five wildfires currently raging in southern California.

Containment, importantly, does not mean that a fire has been extinguished – or that the burn zone is safe to enter.

What it does mean, according to the Western Fire Chiefs Association, is that firefighters have created a “control line” around a portion of the fire that flames should not be able to cross.

So if a wildfire is described as 25% contained, then firefighters have created control lines – usually wide trenches – around 25% of the fire’s perimeter. Once a fire is 100% contained, firefighters can begin extinguishing the fire.

It’s key to bear in mind that a fire being 100% contained does not mean it no longer poses a threat.

“Wind and other factors can sometimes cause spotfires to jump these lines,” the Western Fire Chiefs Association explains, which means fires can sometimes go from being 50% contained back down to 30%, for example.

California governor orders investigation of LA department of water and power

California governor Gavin Newsom said he has called for an independent investigation into the loss of water pressure to some fire hydrants and the reported unavailability of water supplies from the Santa Ynez Reservoir.

In a letter to LA department of water and power chief Janisse Quiñones and LA county public works director Mark Pastrella, Newsom described the reports as “deeply troubling”.

“While water supplies from local fire hydrants are not designed to extinguish wildfires over large areas, losing supplies from fire hydrants likely impaired the effort to protect some homes and evacuation corridors,” he wrote.

“We need answers to how that happened,” he added.

Jem Bartholomew

Silvia Fernandez, 59, a federal government contractor, in Hancock Park spoke about the feeling of loss while watching the fires across the LA region.

I have watched in a mixture of disbelief, awe and horror on Tuesday to see large smoke clouds first emerge to the west (Palisades) and then to the east (Eaton and Altadena).

When the Sunset fire broke out on Wednesday night, much closer to me in the north, I had this sense of being surrounded by flames and smoke.

Luckily the Sunset fire emerged on a day when the winds had died down and water airdrops were possible. [The Sunset fire is now under control.] But it was very claustrophobic. There was a palpable sense of loss and suffering.

I just have this sense of doom. It feels apocalyptic – I know it’s an overused term, but it’s what comes to mind. My neighbors and I watched the aircraft do their magic [dropping water] above the visible flames. I felt fortunate in those moments, to have a little community of safety.

It’s horrible that so much history has been lost, and so much natural beauty.

Robert Mackey

Just days before Donald Trump returns to the Oval Office, promising to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, Adrian Florido of NPR came across a remarkable scene in fire-ravaged Altadena on Thursday: a group of Latino immigrants, some undocumented, volunteering to save the homes of evacuated residents they did not know.

Florido spoke with a group of about 20 volunteers, who came from other neighborhoods and were trying to douse fires with garden hoses and buckets of water from swimming pools.

“Why come into a neighborhood that isn’t yours,” the reporter asked one undocumented immigrant from Guatemala who works cleaning houses, “to save houses whose owners you don’t know?”

“Our values and principles come first,” the woman said. “That’s what our parents taught us.”

“You don’t need to have legal papers or be a US citizen to help others,” a volunteer from Mexico told Florido.

“When you support someone, you strengthen them. When you stop and ask - could you use a hand? - they’ll remember that.”

We reported earlier that California insurance commissioner Ricardo Lara announced that he had issued a moratorium to stop all non-renewals and cancellations by insurance companies for a year.

The LA Times has more some more detail on the moratorium:

The moratorium, issued Thursday, protects homeowners living within the perimeter of the fire and in adjoining ZIP codes from losing their policies for one year, starting from when Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on Wednesday.

The moratoriums, provided for under state law, are typically issued after large fires and apply to all policyholders regardless of whether they have suffered a loss.

Insurers have also been urged to pause for six months any pending non-renewals or cancellations that were issued up to 90 days before 7 January.

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