By Rollo Ross and Jackie Luna
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -Raging wildfires surrounding Los Angeles spread to the Hollywood Hills on Wednesday, after other fires in the area killed at least five people, destroyed hundreds of homes and stretched firefighting resources and water supplies to the limit.
More than 100,000 people were ordered to evacuate as dry, hurricane-force winds hindered firefighting operations and spread the fires, which have burned parched terrain almost unimpeded since they began on Tuesday.
“This firestorm is the big one,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told a press conference after rushing back to Los Angeles upon cutting short an official trip to Ghana.
A new fire broke out in the Hollywood Hills on Wednesday evening, Fire Chief Kristin Crowley told a press conference, forcing more evacuations and raising to six the number of wildfires burning in Los Angeles County.
Four of them were 0% contained according to state officials, including a pair of major conflagrations on the eastern and western flanks of the city that continued to grow as night fell on Wednesday.
In between, the so-called Sunset Fire in Hollywood Hills scorched 50 acres (20 hectares) on Wednesday, Cal Fire said. Helicopter crews doused the flames with water drops, appearing to impede its rapid advance.
The L.A. Fire Department issued an evacuation order for people in an area within Hollywood Boulevard to the south, Mulholland Drive to the north, the 101 Freeway to the east and Laurel Canyon Boulevard to the west – all iconic addresses for people in the entertainment industry.
Within that area is the Dolby Theater, where the Oscars are held. Next week’s Oscar nominations announcement was already postponed by two days because of the fire, organizers said.
Though relatively small compared to the others, the Sunset Fire burned just above Hollywood Boulevard and its Walk of Fame. It would need to cross the 101 Freeway to endanger the Hollywood sign and Griffith Observatory further up in the hills.
SMOLDERING RUINS
On the west side of Los Angeles, the Palisades Fire consumed 15,832 acres (6,406 hectares) and hundreds of structures in the hills between Santa Monica and Malibu, racing down Topanga Canyon until reaching the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday.
Aerial video by KTLA television showed block after block of smoldering homes in Pacific Palisades, the smoky grid occasionally punctuated by the orange blaze of another home still on fire.
To the east, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, the Eaton Fire claimed another 10,600 acres (4,289 hectares), another 1,000 structures, and killed at least five people, officials said.
Private forecaster AccuWeather estimated initial damage and economic loss at more than $50 billion.
“We’re facing a historic natural disaster. And I think that can’t be stated strong enough,” Kevin McGowan, director of emergency management for Los Angeles County, told a press conference.
Even though forecasters said winds would subside briefly on Wednesday night, so-called red flag conditions were expected to remain until Friday.
Nearly 300,000 homes and businesses lost power in Los Angeles County, down from nearly 1 million earlier on Wednesday, according to PowerOutage.us. School was canceled throughout Los Angeles County at least through Thursday, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said.
“We’ve had fires over the years but not something like this,” Frances Colella, a 71-year-old retiree, told Reuters at an evacuation center in Pasadena, resting in a wheelchair alongside dozens of others. “It’s a really sad occurrence and I can’t remember anything like this.”
WATER WOES
The scale and spread of the blazes stretched exhausted firefighting crews beyond their capacity.
Firefighters from six other states were being rushed to California, while an additional 250 engine companies with 1,000 personnel were being moved from Northern California to Southern California, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone told a press conference.
Water shortages caused some hydrants to run dry in upscale Pacific Palisades, officials said.
“We pushed the system to the extreme. We’re fighting a wildfire with urban water systems,” Janisse Quinones, chief executive of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, told a press conference.
Pacific Palisades relies on three tanks that hold about a million gallons (3.78 million liters) each, and the demand for water to fight fires at lower elevations was making it difficult to refill water tanks at higher elevations, she said.
By Wednesday afternoon, all three of those tanks and all 114 reservoirs throughout the city were refilled, Quinones said in a later press conference.
The fires struck at an especially vulnerable time for Southern California, which has not seen significant rainfall for months.
Then came the powerful Santa Ana winds, bringing dry desert air from the east toward the coastal mountains, fanning wildfires while blowing over the hilltops and down through the canyons.
Scientists said the fires, erupting well outside of the traditional wildfire season, mark the latest in weather extremes that are likely to escalate further as global temperatures continue to climb in coming decades.
President Joe Biden, who declared the fires a major disaster, joined California Governor Gavin Newsom at a Santa Monica fire station to get a briefing on firefighting efforts.
In his final days as president before handing off to President-elect Donald Trump on Jan. 20, Biden canceled an upcoming trip to Italy in order to focus on directing the federal response to the fires, the White House said.
“We’re doing anything and everything and as long as it takes to contain these fires … to make sure you get back to normal,” Biden said at the fire station. “It’s going to be a hell of a long way. It’s going to take time.”
(Reporting by Rollo Ross, Jackie Luna, Joe Brock, Matt McKnight, Jorge Garcia and Mike Blake in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Daniel Trotta, Doina Chiacu, Jonathan Allen, David Ljunggren, Shubham Kalia, Gursimran Kaur, Kanishka Singh and Kanjyik Ghosh; Writing by Joseph Ax and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Mary Milliken, Angus MacSwan, Mark Porter, Sandra Maler and Lincoln Feast.)
