With a another fire bursting into life on Wednesday night, Los Angeles is burning like it never has before.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass returned to the city this week after a diplomatic mission to Africa. Shortly after arriving, she convened a press conference featuring the respective public safety officials who have been spearheading the City’s response to apocalyptic wildfires in her absence.
“Our strategy included preparations and pre deployment, and it now includes fire crews from around the state and from our federal partners,” she said. “We are also adapting in real time as these winds continue to blow, so let me be clear, I am making sure that we leave no resource untapped. Firefighters are now on scene from across the state and across the country.”
She said the city would get through due to the heroism of firefighters, the vigilance of Angelenos and the spirit of the city.”
For the first 30 minutes, it was positively reassuring. Until, as if out of spite for the attempt at hope, the Santa Ana’s welcomed Bass home with another emergency.
“So I just want to announce very, very quickly that we have a new brush fire that has just broken out within the last five minutes in the Hollywood Hills near Runyon Canyon,” said LAFD Chief Kristin Crowley who moments earlier had been explaining her department’s efforts to handle the already unprecedented Palisades Fire. “I don't have a lot of information. I can tell you, we're throwing all of our available resources at it as we speak. I am seeing active water drops as we speak. As we have more information, we'll disseminate this to all of you, but I'm going to go ahead and excuse myself so we can go ahead and start to strategize and move towards mitigating this additional major emergency in the city.”
What was quickly named the Sunset Fire demanded immediate attention from an already overworked and understaffed public safety system.
The fast-moving fire broke out in the Hollywood Hills about a mile from the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Those evacuated joined the estimated 130,000 people were under evacuation orders from multiple out-of-control Los Angeles wildfires Wednesday. Those fires have killed at least five people. Nearly 1,900 structures have been destroyed in the two fires, and the number is expected to increase. Three major blazes that erupted Tuesday have grown substantially blanketing LA with a thick cloud of smoke and ash and ravaged the city from the Pacific Coast to inland Pasadena.
City officials said Los Angeles continues aggressively responding to the Palisades Fire, Hurst Fire and the recently erupted Sunset Fire amid the dangerous ongoing wind storm and extreme weather conditions impacting the L.A. region.
They said helicopters are again dropping water from the air including on the new Sunset Fire and hundreds of firefighters continue to be on the scene to help respond to the fire emergencies.
The Palisades Fire has prompted Los Angeles to declare a local emergency to amplify response efforts. Officials said the declaration will also help clear a path for a rapid recovery. The County has declared a local emergency as well and President Biden has approved additional resources for the state of California to battle the fire.
Biden was briefed on the situation at a Santa Monica fire station on Wednesday alongside California Governor Newsom.
The Presidential declaration makes available federal assistance funding to help state, tribal and local governments cover emergency response costs. It also includes Individual Assistance programs for affected citizens and businesses, which includes temporary accommodation and financial assistance for destroyed property.
The President has also provided significant support through the U.S. Forest Service, including five large air tankers,10 helicopters and dozens of engines.
"The situation in Los Angeles is highly dangerous and rapidly evolving. President Biden’s swift action is a huge lift for California — as we throw everything we can into protecting residents with substantial state, local and federal resources. To all those in Southern California, please continue to listen to local authorities and don’t wait, evacuate if asked," said Newsom.
However, the scale of the response hasn’t immunized the efforts against criticism. Initially anecdotal tales of poor water pressure when fighting the Palisades fire have grown into full-blown accusations that the City’s water supply isn’t adequate for the task.
DWP CEO Janisse Quiñones rebuffed those concerns saying the system has never seen as much demand as it has in the past two days and that standard fire hydrants simply aren’t designed to fight neighborhood-wide infernos fueled by hurricane force winds.
She said that while about 200 of 1,000 hydrants did lose water pressure, the department has to try to keep water coverage across the entire fireline, including higher elevations. Even the addition of water tankers has its limits as they tankers be refilled, or used, but not both at the same time.
“But in order for me to fill the tanks, I had to ask the fire department to stop fighting the fire, and that's a very tough operational decision to make,” she said.
Bass also beat back criticism that the city had been lax in preparing for potential fires and that she is responsible for reduced budgets at LAFD that could be hampering the response.
“Let me just say that we are actively fighting this fire, and this is a time for vigilance and action, not speculation,” she said. “This is a time for Angelinos to come together united to protect themselves and their families and also each other. So what we are seeing is the result of eight months of negligible rain and winds that have not been seen in LA in at least 14 years. It's a deadly combination, and I've been in constant contact with our fire commanders on the ground and our partners at every level of government.”
That result is the apparently ever expanding Palisades Fire, clocking in at over 15,000 acres and it has destroyed more than 1,000 structures. It has devastated entire neighborhoods and when combined with the others, the impact on the region is mindboggling.
AccuWeather released a preliminary estimate putting the total damage and economic loss from the devastating wildfires at $52-$57 billion.
“This is already one of the worst wildfires in California history. Should a large number of additional structures be burned in the coming days, it may become the worst wildfire in modern California history based on the number of structures burned and economic loss,” AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter said.
According to the report, the company’s estimate incorporates independent methods to evaluate direct and indirect impacts of the storm, includes both insured and uninsured losses, and is based on a variety of sources, statistics, and unique techniques AccuWeather uses to estimate the damage to property, job and wage losses, crops, infrastructure damage, interruption of the supply chain, auxiliary business losses and flight delays or cancellations. “The estimate also accounts for the costs of evacuations, relocations, emergency management, and government expenses for cleanup operations,” it said. “It also includes the long-term effect on business logistics, transportation, and tourism as well as the tail health effects and the medical and other expenses of yet unreported deaths and significant injuries, as well as the long tail of negative impacts to physical and mental health that survivors may face in the next decade.”
As large as those numbers may be, the most disturbing figure is thankfully much smaller. Experts estimate that five people have died so far, all associated with the Eaton Fire.
