LOS ANGELES β A fast-moving fire in the Hollywood Hills erupted Wednesday night as more evacuations were ordered for Los Angeles residents and fire crews battled three other major blazes that killed at least five people.
The Sunset Fire was burning near the Hollywood Bowl and other iconic landmarks in the Hollywood Hills.
Winds were easing and firefighters from across the state were relieving exhausted crews, but the danger was far from over. As officials provided an update on the fires, a new blaze broke out in the Hollywood Hills, and evacuation orders were also extended to Santa Monica.
A man walks in front of the burning Altadena Community Church on Wednesday in the downtown Altadena section of Pasadena, Calif.
More than 1,000 structures, mostly homes, have been destroyed, and more than 130,000 people are under evacuation orders in the metropolitan area, from the Pacific Coast inland to Pasadena, a number that continues to shift as new fires erupt.
A thick smoke wafted over many parts of Los Angeles. More than half a dozen schools in the area were either damaged or destroyed, including Palisades Charter High School, which was featured in many Hollywood productions, including the 1976 horror movie βCarrieβ and the TV series βTeen Wolf,β officials said.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said firefighters from across California and elsewhere arrived to help along with air operations that were dousing flames. She warned they still faced βerratic winds,β though not of hurricane force like Tuesday evening, when much of the destruction occurred.
In Pasadena, Fire Chief Chad Augustin said between 200 and 500 structures were damaged or lost from the Eaton Fire that started Tuesday night.
The Palisades Fire burns a structure Wednesday in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles.
He said the city's water system was stretched and was further hampered by power outages but even without those issues, firefighters would not have been able to stop the fire because embers blown by the intense winds ignited block after block.
On the Pacific Coast west of downtown Los Angeles, a major fire leveled entire blocks, reducing grocery stores and banks to rubble in the Pacific Palisades, a hillside area along the coast dotted with celebrity homes and memorialized by the Beach Boys in their 1960s hit βSurfinβ USA.β
More than 1,000 structures were destroyed in the Palisades fire, the most destructive in the modern history of LA. Many people were hurt, including first responders, LA County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said.
The scope of the destruction was just becoming clear: Block after block of California Mission Style homes and bungalows were reduced to nothing but charred remains dotted by stone fireplaces and blackened arched entryways. Ornate iron railing wrapped around the smoldering frame of one house. The apocalyptic scenes spread for miles.
Swimming pools were blackened with soot, and sports cars slumped on melted tires.
A resident of a senior center is evacuated Tuesday as the Eaton Fire approaches in Altadena, Calif.
As flames moved through hisΒ neighborhood, Jose Velasquez sprayed down his Altadena home with water as embers rained down on the roof. He managed to save their home, which also houses their family business of selling churros, a Mexican pastry. Others weren't so lucky. Many of his neighbors were at work when they lost their homes.
βSo we had to call a few people and then we had people messaging, asking if their house was still standing," he said. "We had to tell them that itβs not.β
Beyond the burned areas, residents worked wearing N95 masks, unable to escape the toxic smoke wafting over huge sections of the city.
Actors lost homes
The flames marched toward highly populated and affluent neighborhoods, including Calabasas and Santa Monica, home to Californiaβs rich and famous. Hollywood stars.
Mandy Moore, Cary ElwesΒ and Paris Hilton are among the stars who said Wednesday they had lost homes.
Fire crews battle the Eaton Fire next to a fully engulfed residence Wednesday in Altadena, Calif.
Billy Crystal and his wife Janice lost their home of 45 years in the Palisades Fire.
βWe raised our children and grandchildren here. Every inch of our house was filled with love. Beautiful memories that canβt be taken away," the Crystals wrote in the statement.
In Palisades Village, theΒ public library, two major grocery stores, a pair of banks and several boutiques were destroyed.
βItβs just really weird comingΒ back to somewhere that doesnβt really exist anymore,β said Dylan Vincent, who returned to the neighborhood to retrieve some items and saw that his elementary school had burned down and that whole blocks had been flattened.
The fires have consumed a total of about 42 square miles β nearly the size of the entire city of San Francisco.
Fast-moving flames allowed little time to escape
Flames moved so quickly that many barely had time to escape. Police sought shelter inside their patrol cars, and residents at a senior living center were pushed in wheelchairs and hospital beds down a street to safety in the foothills northeast of LA.
In the race to get to safety inΒ Pacific Palisades, roadways became impassable when scores of people abandonedΒ their vehicles and fled on foot.
Biden signs emergency declaration
President Joe Biden signed a federal emergency declaration after arriving at a Santa Monica fire station for a briefing with Gov. Gavin Newsom, who dispatched National Guard troops to help.
The president later canceled the final overseas trip of his presidency just hours before he was set to depart for Rome and the Vatican, choosing to remain in Washington to monitor the response to devastating California fires.
He was scheduled to leave Thursday afternoon, after eulogizing former President Jimmy Carter at a memorial service in Washington, for the three-day trip to meet with Pope Francis and Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The trip was meant as a coda to the second Catholic U.S. presidentβs time in the White House and a final opportunity to showcase the strength of American alliances before he leaves office on Jan. 20.
The announcement of the tripβs cancellation came just hours after Biden departed Los Angeles after meeting his first great-grandchild, who was born Wednesday at an area hospital. He received a briefing from local fire officials before returning to Washington.
Several Hollywood studios suspended production, and Universal Studios closed its theme park between Pasadena and Pacific Palisades.
With an estimated 1,000 structures destroyed and the fire still active, the Palisades Fire is by far the city's most destructive in modern history, topping the Sayre fire in 2008 that destroyed just more than 600 structures, according to statistics kept by the Wildfire Alliance, a partnership between the cityβs fire department and MySafe:LA. Structures refers to homes and other buildings.
Several Southern California landmarks were heavily damaged, including the Reel Inn in Malibu, a seafood restaurant. Owner Teddy Leonard and her husband hope to rebuild.
βWhen you look at the grand scheme of things, as long as your family is well and everyoneβs alive, youβre still winning, right?β she said.
Rising heat drives drought more than lack of rain, UCLA study says
Rising heat drives drought more than lack of rain, UCLA study says
Updated
According to recent research from experts at the University of California, Los Angeles and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, higher temperatures brought on by anthropogenic climate change have turned an ordinary drought in the American West into the "exceptional" category, with greater evaporation contributing more than a lack of rainfall.Β
The study, published in Science Advances, found that evaporation accounted for 61% of drought severity in the West from 2020 to 2022, while reduced precipitation contributed 39%.
"Research has already shown that warmer temperatures contribute to drought, but this is, to our knowledge, the first study that actually shows that moisture loss due to demand is greater than the moisture loss due to lack of rainfall," Rong Fu, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UCLA and co-author of the study, says.
According to the LA Post, the findings mark a shift from historical patterns, where Western droughts primarily resulted from insufficient precipitation, and evaporative demand was a minor factor. This picture is complicated by rising average temperatures brought on by climate change brought on by the use of fossil fuels. Even while natural variations in rainfall still bring on droughts, there is greater heat to draw moisture from plants, soil, and bodies of water.Β
"For generations, drought has been associated with drier-than-normal weather. This study further confirms we've entered a new paradigm where rising temperatures are leading to intense droughts, with precipitation as a secondary factor," Veva Deheza, executive director of NOAA's National Integrated Drought Information System, says.
The study examined 70 years of observational data to separate naturally occurring droughts from those intensified by human-caused climate change. Previous research has concluded that drought is exacerbated by rising temperatures using climate models that account for growing greenhouse gas concentrations. However, they were unable to identify the part that evaporative demand played because of naturally fluctuating weather patterns in the absence of observational data regarding actual weather patterns.Β
When the natural weather patterns were considered, the researchers found that 80% of the increase in evaporative demand since 2000 can be attributed to climate change. Since 2000, climate change has been the primary cause of both the expansion of the drought area and the increase in drought severity, with that percentage rising to over 90% during the drought period.Β
The analysis revealed that average drought-affected areas in the American West increased by 17% between 2000 and 2022 due to an increase in evaporative demand compared to the 1948-1999 period.
Since 2000, high evaporative demand alone can now trigger drought conditions in 66% of the historically drought-prone regions, even without decreased rainfall. Before 2000, this was true for only 26% of the area.
A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor, making it harder for rain to form, as when temperatures rise, water molecules move more rapidly and resist combining into raindrops. This creates an ongoing cycle: While more water evaporates into the warming atmosphere, less falls back to Earth as precipitation. Scientists say this pattern leads to droughts that last longer and spread across larger regions as global temperatures climb.
"During the drought of 2020β2022, moisture demand really spiked," Fu says. "Though the drought began through a natural reduction in precipitation, I would say its severity was increased from the equivalent of 'moderate' to 'exceptional' on the drought severity scale due to climate change."
Moderate means the 10%β20% strongest drought, while "exceptional' means the top 2% strongest drought on the severity scale, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Climate model simulations suggest these conditions will become more common. The type of drought seen in 2020-2022, previously occurring once every thousand years, is projected to happen every 60 years by mid-century and every six years by the century's end if greenhouse gas emissions continue at current levels.
"Even if precipitation looks normal, we can still have drought because moisture demand has increased so much, and there simply isn't enough water to keep up with that increased demand," Fu says. "This is not something you could build bigger reservoirs or something to prevent because when the atmosphere warms, it will just suck up more moisture everywhere."
He says the only way to prevent droughts is to stop temperatures from increasing, which Fu explains means we have to stop emitting greenhouse gases.
This story was produced by the LA Post and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
