Residents are bracing for new wildfire evacuation orders, as forecasters warn of another “particularly dangerous weather situation” across northern Los Angeles.
This is even as the official death toll from last week’s fires in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades was expected to rise. Los Angeles, and parts of Ventura county to the north, faced “extreme fire risk” warnings through Wednesday, with officials warning of “significant risk of rapid fire spread” due to the Santa Ana winds – which have gusts of up to 75mph – .
The “particularly dangerous weather situation” designation is used very rarely, and was designed by meteorologists to signal “the extreme of the extremes”. The winds were predicted to reach near hurricane-force in some areas.
“I don’t want people to start thinking everything’s OK now. Everything’s not OK yet,” the Los Angeles county sheriff, Robert Luna, said in a Tuesday morning press conference. “It is still very dangerous for the next 24 hours.”
This is the fourth time in recent months that Los Angeles has faced a “particularly dangerous weather situation”, and the three previous warnings all resulted in major wildfires, the Los Angeles Times reported.
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As of Tuesday morning, 84,800 people had been warned they might be ordered to evacuate because of fire risk, while another 88,000 people remained under current evacuation orders. In the afternoon, officials said at least 25 people had died from the fires. More than 12,000 structures had been destroyed. Estimates put the cost of damage at about $250bn, which could make it the costliest fire in American history.
At least two dozen people have been reported missing, 18 of them in the Eaton fire in north-east Los Angeles, and six around the Pacific Palisades.
But the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, and other officials – who have faced criticism over their initial response to the fires – expressed confidence that the region was ready to face the new threat with scores of additional firefighters brought in from around the US, as well as from Canada and Mexico.
At a press conference, Bass described the level of destruction across parts of the city as the aftermath of a “dry hurricane”, and pledged that city officials would work hard to reduce the bureaucracy residents may face as they start to recover from the fires.
The level of devastation so farshaken the region, with some beginning to question how Los Angeles should rebuild, and whether communities across California need to do more to adapt both new housing and existing housing to the ongoing threat of wildfires.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
