Los Angeles Area Ravaged by Fires
At least five people have been reported dead and 130,000 are under evacuation orders as fires have ravaged the Los Angeles area beginning on Tuesday. The fires have been exacerbated by strong winds and low humidity.
In total, there are currently six active wildfires in Los Angeles county. The two largest of the fires, the Eaton fire north of Pasadena and in Altadena, and the Palisades fire west of Los Angeles and ranging from Malibu to Santa Monica, have resulted in the evacuations of over 70,000 and approximately roughly 60,000 people respectively, and have also burned 10,600 and 15,800 acres. Both fires are currently reported at 0 percent containment.
The most recent fire, the Sunset fire, broke out in a heavily populated section of the Hollywood Hills and has resulted in thousands more evacuations. Two of the other fires, the Hurst and Lidia fires, have burnt 700 and 340 acres respectively. The final fire, the Woodley fire, has been controlled at 30 acres.
Firefighter crews had to contend with “dry” fire hydrants, which either ran out of water or only had diminished water pressure.
Rick Caruso, a billionaire real-estate developer and the runner-up in Los Angeles’s 2022 mayoral election, ascribed these dry hydrants to municipal mismanagement.
“There’s no water in the Palisades. There’s no water coming out of the fire hydrants. This is an absolute mismanagement by the city. Not the firefighters’ fault, but the city’s,” Caruso, who owns the Palisades Village mall and whose daughter lost her home in the fire, told Fox 11 Los Angeles.
“We have got a mayor that is out of the country, and we have got a city that is burning, and there is no resources to put out fires,” Caruso continued. “It looks like we’re in a third-world country here.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had traveled to Ghana over the weekend for a presidential inauguration, and returned to Los Angeles Wednesday. Bass has been criticized, including by many on the left, for not returning earlier as the National Weather Service issued warnings of strong winds amid “extreme fire conditions” as early as last Thursday and a “fire weather watch” on Tuesday.
President Joe Biden, who had met with local law enforcement in Los Angeles before returning to Washington earlier on Wednesday, announced that he would be cancelling a planned trip to Italy to focus on the fires.
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