Massive wildfires continue to rage across LA area, leaving neighborhoods in ruins

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• Geoff Bennett:

  Welcome to the "News Hour."

  Fast-moving wildfires in the Los Angeles area have created extreme conditions for millions of people and are being blamed for at least two deaths.

• Amna Nawaz:

  As of this evening, there are about 400,000 homes without power and more than 100,000 people evacuated because of four different fires.

  Stephanie Sy is there and has this report.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Across the Los Angeles region, the skies were covered in smoke as fast-growing wildfires spread from winds that gusted to nearly 100 miles per hour.

  Pat and Cal (ph) Abe evacuated from their home in Santa Monica last night near where the Palisades Fire raged.

• Pat Abe, California Resident:

  Definitely very scary, feeling ominous, and heard lots of explosions and flames up above us on the canyon wall. It's just devastating.

• Stephanie Sy:

  This fire destroyed an estimated 1,000 structures, including a high school, as thousands of residents raced to escape amid heavy traffic. Winds were so strong that firefighting aircraft had to be grounded on Tuesday night.

  Earlier today, flights were back in the air as winds decreased, according to L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. But gusty conditions are expected to resume, with a red flag warning in the region through tomorrow night. Local officials said fires were responsible for at least two deaths and a high number of serious injuries.

  And Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley warned that emergency services were stretched to the limit.

• Kristin Crowley, Los Angeles City, California, Fire Chief:

  We are absolutely not out of danger yet. With the strong winds that continue to push through the city and the county today, I will tell you that we are all committed to our first responders, our firefighters, who will remain focused on protecting lives and property.

• Stephanie Sy:

  The Palisades Fire is just one of several fires, mostly uncontained, in and around Los Angeles. In all, they have prompted the evacuation of more than 100,000 residents, a number that has been growing all day.

• Pat Abe:

  We're in Santa Monica right now at a friend's house. And, certainly, as they started extending the evacuations down into Santa Monica, and then you have to start thinking, OK, well, where are we going to go now?

• Stephanie Sy:

  In the foothills of Northeast Los Angeles, near Pasadena, the Eaton Fire started Tuesday evening and grew quickly, prompting emergency evacuations.

  Staff at one senior center had to push dozens of residents down the road to escape, and a nearby synagogue in Pasadena caught fire and was destroyed. The Eaton Fire has now spread to more than 10,600 acres.

• Man:

  What we saw here in the last 24 hours is unprecedented.

• Stephanie Sy:

  President Joe Biden and California Governor Gavin Newsom received a briefing on the fires in Santa Monica and pledged additional Department of Defense resources to fight the fires.

  Joe Biden, President of the United States: We're prepared to anything and everything as long as it takes to contain these fires and help reconstruct.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Governor Newsom said the state had received every resource it had asked for from the federal government, including a major disaster declaration.

• Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA):

  We had prepositioned assets this weekend in anticipation of these weather events, the complexity of multiple fires, the likelihood these weather events, this wind event will continue over the course of the next many days.

• Stephanie Sy:

  President-elect Trump blamed Newsom's policies in a social media post, saying he prioritized a fish species over distributing more water, a claim that Governor Newsom's office called fiction and dismissed as politics.

  As thousands of firefighters work to contain the places, county officials urge residents to conserve water for a system that they described as being pushed to the extreme. There were also reports that firefighters had encountered dry fire hydrants.

  Janisse Quinones, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power: And we're fighting a wildfire with urban water systems. And that is really challenging.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Phil Brock's home is just across the street from the mandatory evacuation zone.

• Phil Brock, California Resident:

  We see fires every year. And you come to this spot to look and say, Jesus, another fire. But I have never had anything where people have thought that this area would need to evacuate, the Santa Monica Canyon would need to evacuate. That's incomprehensible to me.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Here in Altadena, the California sun has been blotted out by a field of gray that surrounds us.

  We are in the fire evacuation warning zone. There is a lot of activity around us, including fire engines that are going to attack the fire on the mountain. And you can see behind me even a structure that's in flames. I understand that structure has — the fire there has been put out several times today, but there are embers flying all around us and it continues to reignite.

  So this continues to be a dangerous situation and very personal for those of us who grew up in this area. Almost everyone I have spoken to know somebody who is either evacuated or who has lost a home in this fire.

  I just recently found out that a friend of mine lost their family home here in Altadena just minutes away, and they said their entire neighborhood is gone.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Just devastating story after devastating story there.

  Stephanie, we have heard from officials, as you reported, about how they're struggling to both slow and contain these fires. What more have you learned about the strain on their resources?

• Stephanie Sy:

  Well, as they said in a news conference earlier today, emergency first responders are stretched to their capacity.

  Then there's the issue of firefighting. Even though Cal Fire is generally prepositioned in Southern California at this time of year, you have multiple active fires burning that are threatening life, limb and property. So, the first priority for those firefighters is going to be to preserve life.

  But things got so bad last night here in Altadena as the Eaton Fire, which I'm close to, flared up, that they put out a call on social media for off-duty firefighters in the Los Angeles area to report to duty. Then there is the issue of water capacity. And we have all heard by now reports of firefighters going to hook up to fire hydrants that went dry.

  They said at the press conference that at least in the Palisades Fire case, they just ran out of water to address the demand and were not able to recharge quickly enough. But those questions will be important to be asked in the next couple of days.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Stephanie, as you well know, California is no stranger to bad wildfires but the conditions around these fires and the start of the Palisades Fire seem unexpectedly bad.

  Tell us more about that.

• Stephanie Sy:

  Well, as somebody who grew up here, it is not unusual to see fires in Malibu every several years. There was a major fire there in 2018. It has to do with the topography, as well as the Santa Ana winds, which do gust up to 50 miles per hour typically at this time of year.

  What is unusual is how severe that wind event has been. I had family and friends that were reporting 80-mile-per-hour winds, up to 100 mile-per-hour gusts. That is highly unusual. It makes it very difficult for them to fight these fires, because the fires themselves are blown by the Santa Anas, and then they can't get aircraft and air tankers to attack the fires from the sky. That part seems unusual.

  The other thing we're talking about is over a hundred homes in Altadena here that have been burned. So, they're highly populated areas in the San Gabriel Valley.

• Amna Nawaz:

  That's Stephanie Sy reporting from Altadena, California, tonight.

  Stephanie, thank you to you and the team. Please stay safe. Thank you.