
How the LA wildfires unfolded and what’s needed for recovery | BBC News
BBC News- 91 views
- 15 Jan 2025
As Los Angeles faces its most destructive wildfires in history, tens of thousands of buildings have been destroyed, and hundreds ...
Devastation comes to California. All right, dude. Let's get out of here. Residents flee for their lives. There's nothing we can do now, bro. We had everything, the sentimental things. My mom passed away. We had only a few things of hers left. All All the stuff that's here is replaceable. People are not. So happy the family is the most important thing. Homes are destroyed on an unprecedented scale. People would normally be driving up and down here with surfboards on top of their cars, ready to enjoy a day at the beach. But right now, it just looks like some apocalypse. Firefighters struggle to hold back the flames. All 29 fire departments in our county are not prepared for this type of widespread disaster. But how did it happen? And why did the fires spread so quickly? Los Angeles is America's biggest city on the West Coast, and people here are used to wildfires. They've destroyed homes and businesses time and time again, but no one could have predicted the scale of the tragedy about to unfold when news first broke of one fire in one community. You can see they are dropping water. They just... There you go.
You can see it happened right there, and there are some hand crews on the ground. Would you mind talking to us for a second? Okay, what's your name? Charles. Charles, have you been evacuated from the area or not yet? Not yet. We have seen that before, so Nothing new to us for the last 32 years that I've been here. Within hours, things are getting serious. Residents can scarcely believe their eyes. Fires were this close to the cars. People left their cars on Palisades Drive. Yeah. Burning up the hillside, palm trees, everything's going. What happened? There's a lot of fire right there. That's why the people coming. We leave the car. They said to get out of your car? Okay. It's just so sad. And I feel for everyone that's lost property and fires, I've never been this close to it. Driving down the Canyon was really very shattering. Huge smoke plumes can be seen rising above the Pacific Palisades area of the city, and residents have been issued with an evacuation order. Please take this wind emergency very seriously. Lastly, as you heard from the speakers before me, this is something that is going to get worse throughout the night, so we all have to look out for each other.
The fire broke out around 10:30 in the morning in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood. It's an upscale area between Santa Monica and Malibu, home to many famous residents. Sitting here and waiting to find out whether we're going to be evacuated or not is like the time can't go by any slower. Yes, baby, come here, Baba. So instead, we decided to pass the time by putting together bags of clothes for our friends who have lost everything. I have never seen flames from my house like this, ever. This is insanity. I hope everyone is staying safe tonight. Lots of love, lots of prayers. Okay, we found everyone. Just packing up the car, getting ready to go to the hotel. It's so big. It's so red. My thoughts and prayers are with everyone tonight. I'm really pleased to stop soon. Our community is beyond devastated. We are all pulling together. A lot of my friends have lost their home. I'm waiting to see if our home will be there. Right now, it's just a waiting game. Among the buildings threatened the world famous Getty Museum with 44,000 artifacts. I have the waves crashing in front of me here on PCH, and I have the flames names behind me here on the hill after coming off the Tabesco Canyon, where embers were being blown around as you saw.
The high school caught fire. Hall was burning on either side, and that fire over the last few hours It's just... I mean, look at the gust. It's dust right now. It's literally pushing. It's blowing south. So it is just throwing these flames over these hills and through these canyons. The headlines. 30,000 people have been ordered to evacuate their homes because of a wildfire which is tearing through wealthy suburbs of Los Angeles. It's like a ghost town. Everybody's abandoned this place, as you can imagine, and the fires are still smoldering. People would normally be driving up and down here with surfboards on top of their cars ready to enjoy a day at the beach. But right now, it just looks like some apocalypse. There's not enough structure protection in here to really try and save all of these homes. It's really going to be a struggle. This is hard heartbreaking feel for these people, and it's just sad to watch all these homes go up. This was just a little antique shop, pizza place. These places have been here forever, ever since I've been alive. I really thought my shop was gone. It's still here right now.
I don't know if it'll make it or not. There's a lot of people who don't have insurance, or fire insurance. I know that's difficult in this area, especially if you're in the fire zone, and I feel horrible for them. I'll tell you, I've been here 47 years. I grew up on this block. I saw the other Algerian fires, and it was nothing like this. Nothing like this. My son left the house before us on foot. He doesn't have a cell phone or anything like that. So I'm searching for him now. I'm looking for him. We got a phone call from a neighbor saying that our Our house was on fire, and we knew that there were no fire trucks in the area, so we thought we would come up and see if we could get in the area. I keep going from not crying to now starting to cry again because I know a lot of these people and they've lost everything. It's pretty surreal to see all this. Five minutes ago, I was sitting in the car by myself, and the tears just came over my face. So It's fine. Entire history is in the house.
We did take all of our family pictures and a few valuable paintings out last night. So all the stuff that's here is replaceable. People are not. Very lucky. So having the family is the most important thing. I'm going to break down again. That's what I feel. It's my whole life. Everything wasn't there. I've lost everything. You shape up. You're supposed to be a support. Anyway, I'm scared. I'm okay. I'll be okay. I'm tough, and we'll start over. You are tough. Even though I'm 91 years old, I'll start over again. The difference with this is that we've had these huge 50 to 80 mile an hour winds, and it's still windy. And so it didn't matter where the fire started yesterday, but the embers flew everywhere. Let's go back to Emma Vardy now. And Emma, this area is no stranger to wild fires, but nothing could have prepared them for this. What makes this so different is that there are so many fires burning at once, and they're burning so close to residential areas. Now, emergency crews on the ground have admitted they just don't have enough people to deal with this developing situation, and some of those fires are still growing in size.
The hillsides are still burning behind us, and every time the winds blow, there's a gust of wind, we're just seeing flames up on the hillside there burst back into life, a reminder of how unpredictable this fire is and how much the winds have been driving it and making life so difficult. We have also been hearing about some serious injuries to residents who did not evacuate their homes, choosing to stay behind for various reasons to try and protect their homes or simply leaving it too late. So emergency services are continuing to warn people to take evacuation orders very seriously because this is a day like Los Angeles has not seen before, and it's not even close to being over yet. This is CBS news on the hour. The Southern California wildfires are not only some of the most destructive in state history, they've turned deadly. At least five lives now reported lost. Overnight, destruction continued. 15,000 buildings had been burned, and 100,000 people had been forced from their homes. Firefighters were overwhelmed, and there were increasing reports of looting. So if I very quickly take my mask off, the air is absolutely thick with smoke. The fire crews here tell us they have a shortage of water, and in many instances, they're having to stand and watch these properties burn.
It is a losing battle. I never thought it would come through here. David was hoping his home might have survived, but the whole neighborhood has gone, and with it, his house, too. I would have thought I'd be seeing more planes flying over with water. I mean, there appears to be just two. I mean, in California, are they not like 20 or 30 of them, they got a got you already. I would have thought the firemen would take a stand on a certain area. Maybe they did, and I'm just not seeing it. But From Pacific Palisades, the fire spread across more than 17,000 acres, making it one of the biggest natural disasters in the history of Los Angeles. Five separate fires were now burning. The Palisades and Hearst fires were almost completely uncontained. We've just been evacuated. We've just been evacuated from this Good Samaritan's car. You got it, dad. Moving out vulnerable residence was proving far from easy. There's a fire right outside our car. We got it. No, not that way, dad. My father-in-law has Parkinson's. He can barely move. This was a heroic effort on his part. It was very wobbly. Here, let me try to get you to home.
Which way do I go? This way, dad, to the sidewalk. I went outside. I saw smoke and fire near my father-in-law's house and realized we need to go. The problem is we didn't have a car. I ran up and down the street where he was, Glenhaven, finally found a neighbor who was willing to swing by and pick us up. Most people had already gone at that point. At that point, I grabbed his medicine. That's the only thing I could think to grab. Turn around, we got this. At that point, we jumped in his car. This guy Jeff A neighbor we'd never met before, but salt of the Earth, saved our lives. As we're driving down, there's fires on both sides of the car. We're driving, we're suddenly seeing fires. You could feel the heat. And then the fires were getting closer and closer. And at that point, just being stuck there, surrounded by fire, the policemen started running up the street. Get out of the car, get out of the car. The authorities in Los Angeles have issued a powerful warning against looting and other criminal activity in areas abandoned by people fleeing wildfires. Ten people are known to have died, but officials expect this number to rise.
On day four of the disaster, tens of thousands of acres have been destroyed. Residents are asking why help wasn't coming more quickly. It's just not on a cruise. You don't know people. What I think, I think they're under demand. They did a budget then cut. We actually came to say thank you to our house for being good to us. We were good to it. Well, as thousands of firefighters continue that battle to get this crisis under control, this is what it leaves in its wake. The suburb of Altadena sits at the foot of a mountain range over which the unusually strong winds for this time of year, the Santa Ana winds, they call them, poured in on Tuesday night. And it's that that really lies at the heart of this disaster. The Santa Ana winds have had two effects. Once you get the fire going, well, it's already started. But the Santa Ana winds add in extra dry air. That sucks out all the moisture that's already there in the plant. So it drives them out quicker. So it's actually adding more fuel. And then the speed helps the spread. If you think you can have wind speeds, basically, hurricane force wind speeds blowing with a fire in place, it will push that flame that boundary of the fire over huge areas in such a short space of time.
And that is what we've seen in LA over the last few days. There's much debate about the emergency response. Were the authorities prepared for such a calamity. But there's also another question people are asking, is the changing climate partly to blame for all the devastation? So what the climate scientists say is that the temperature is getting hotter. That's making things drier. You've got extended heat waves which draw moisture out of the soil and out of the vegetation. So you've got more dry vegetation. So when a fire starts, there's more fuel to keep that fire going, and it's likely to burn longer and burn a larger area. The National Oceanographic and Atmosphoric Administration did a paper looking at the relationship between temperature increase and wildfires. They found that climate change had caused an almost 200% increase, almost doubled the area burnt by wildfires since the 1970s. People are saying now $150 billion, the most expensive fire in US history and presumably in world history. So as a climate journalist, you look at this and you say, this is one of those key events in the history of the whole planet's understanding of the potential impact of climate change.
We're just letting everybody know where we're at. We're taking donations, any types. There's anything from kids' supplies, pet supplies, food, anything you could think of that we could help you with. There was a lady here offering housing for people that have lost homes. We're just trying to help in any way possible in a hard time like this. I came here because I'm in need. How I've lost my house, my childhood home. It's just devastating. This is crazy. City I grew up in is gone. We wanted to see if we could get water because that's the mostly thing that we're worried about the water. We need water. Prince Harry and his wife, Megan, have been meeting some of the first responders and victims of the fires at a World Central Kitchen site where food is being distributed. The couple spoke, and as you see, hugged some of the people who had been affected by the Eton fire. It's believed that they had already contributed clothing, children's items, and other essential supplies. The governor of California has called for an independent investigation into whether water shortages hindered efforts to control the wildfire fires that have devastated parts of Los Angeles.
Firefighters are still trying to contain the blazes. Beautiful job. By Saturday, six fires were burning. Poor air quality caused by billowing ash and smoke prompted the authorities to declare a local health emergency. The number of dead climbed to 11. Determining the cause of these fires is critical. To that end, Mayor Bass, Chief Carly, and I are announcing in conjunction with our partner agencies, the creation of the Los Angeles Regional Wildfire Investigative Task Force. This task force is made up of local, state, and federal partners designed to investigate the cause of these fires and to see if there's any connection between them. At least 16 people have died since Tuesday, and about a dozen others are missing. Four large fires are still burning, and officials say that the threat will remain high until Wednesday because of strong winds. To all LA County residents, please be assured that we will continue to battle these wildfires from the air and on the ground until they are fully contained. We stand alongside all of you as we begin repopulation of evacuated areas, establishment of disaster recovery centers, and the rebuilding of your homes, your communities, and your lives. Watching the fires develop sitting, awestruck, seeing this vision of Apocalypse in one of the greatest cities on Earth burning.
It was a cataclysmic fire. California will be probably asking itself big questions. You can't stop or prevent wildfires as such, especially in the climate that California has. It will have to look into various ways to manage the potential and the ways they tackle the fires in the future, especially as it's becoming a growing threat on every month of the year and over wider areas. The imagery of LA has become black and white. It's ash and charred, burnt material. This ghostly landscape that's emerged from a place we're all familiar with because we've all seen the movies. We know what LA looks like. We know the palm trees and the green grass. And now you see this really degraded, frankly terrifying, shattered landscape. The people here will never forget these fires that ushered in the new year. And the scale of the tragedy is really difficult to overstate. Yes, much of the physical damage to homes and businesses, that can be put right, but the lives of some have been changed forever, with many people wondering because the fire season is getting longer and longer. How are they going to cope next time?