LOS ANGELES — The two biggest wildfires ravaging the Los Angeles area this week burned at least 10,000 homes, buildings and other structures, officials said Thursday as they urged more people to heed evacuation orders after a new blaze ignited and quickly grew.
Only hours earlier officials expressed encouragement after firefighters aided by calmer winds and help from crews from outside the state saw the first signs of successfully beating back the region's devastating wildfires that killed at least seven people so far.
"We are expecting this fire to rapidly spread due to high winds," Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said, echoing the forecast that called for winds to strengthen Thursday evening through Friday morning.
Between the Eaton and Palisades fires, the two largest blazes, more than 10,000 structures burned. At least five churches, a synagogue, seven schools, two libraries, boutiques, bars, restaurants, banks and groceries were lost. So too were the Will Rogers' Western Ranch House and Topanga Ranch Motel, local landmarks dating to the 1920s.Â
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Ari Rivera, rear, Anderson Hao hold each other Thursday in front of their destroyed home in Altadena, Calif.
All of the large fires that broke out this week in the Los Angeles area are in a roughly 25-mile band north of downtown. Dozens of blocks were flattened to smoldering rubble in scenic Pacific Palisades. Only the outlines of homes and their chimneys remained. In Malibu, blackened palm strands were all that was left above debris where oceanfront homes once stood.
The government has not yet released figures on the cost of the damage or specifics about how many structures burned. AccuWeather, a private company that provides data on weather and its impact, on Thursday increased its estimate of the damage and economic loss to $135 billion to $150 billion.
Firefighters made significant gains Thursday at slowing the spread of the Eaton and Palisades fires, though Eaton remained at 0% contained and Palisades at only a small percentage.
Crews also knocked down a blaze in the Hollywood Hills, allowing an evacuation to be lifted Thursday. The fire that sparked up late Wednesday near the heart of the entertainment industry came perilously close to igniting the famed Hollywood Bowl outdoor concert venue.
"While we are still facing significant threats, I am hopeful that the tide is turning," Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger said Thursday.
This satellite image shows the Eaton Fire on Wednesday in Altadena, Calif.
Water dropped from aircraft helped fire crews quickly seize control of the fires in the Hollywood Hills and Studio City, officials said. Much of the widespread destruction occurred Tuesday after those aircraft were grounded due to high winds.
Fire officials said Thursday that they didn't yet know the cause of the fires but were investigating.
California's wildfire season is beginning earlier and ending later due to rising temperatures and decreased rainfall tied to climate change, according to recent data.
Dry winds, including the notorious Santa Anas, have contributed to warmer-than-average temperatures in Southern California, which has not seen more than 0.1 inch of rain since early May.
A firefighter waters down a home Thursday in Altadena, Calif.
Earlier this week, hurricane-force winds blew embers, igniting the Southern California hillsides.
Right now, it's impossible to quantify the extent of the destruction other than "total devastation and loss," said Barbara Bruderlin, head of the Malibu Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce.
Of the seven deaths so far, Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley confirmed two were in the Palisades Fire. County officials said the Eaton Fire killed five.
Cadaver dogs and search crews were searching through rubble, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said.
Anthony Mitchell, a 67-year-old amputee, and his son, Justin, who had cerebral palsy, were waiting for an ambulance to come, but they did not make it out, Mitchell's daughter, Hajime White, told The Washington Post.
Shari Shaw told local TV news station KTLA that she tried to get her 66-year-old brother, Victor Shaw, to evacuate Tuesday night but he wanted to stay and fight the fire. Crews found his body with a garden hose in his hand.
On Thursday, recovery crews pulled a body from rubble of what was a beachfront residence in Malibu on the scenic Pacific Coast Highway.
The devastation from the Palisades Fire is seen from the air Thursday in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles.
At least 180,000 people were under evacuation orders, and the fires consumed about 45 square miles — roughly the size of San Francisco. The Palisades Fire is already the most destructive in Los Angeles' history.
All schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second largest, will be closed Friday because of the heavy smoke wafting over the city and ash raining down in parts, and classes will not resume until the conditions improve, officials said.
At least 20 arrests were made for looting, and the city of Santa Monica declared a curfew Wednesday night because of the lawlessness, officials said. Luna said to protect properties national guard troops would be stationed near the areas ravaged by fire and a curfew was expected to go into effect from 6 p.m. until 6 a.m., starting as soon as Thursday.
Flames destroyed the homes of several celebrities, including Billy Crystal, Mandy Moore and Paris Hilton. Jamie Lee Curtis pledged $1 million to start a "fund of support" for those affected by the fires that touched all economic levels from the city's wealthy to its working class.
Rising heat drives drought more than lack of rain, UCLA study says
Rising heat drives drought more than lack of rain, UCLA study says
According to from experts at the University of California, Los Angeles and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, higher temperatures brought on by anthropogenic climate change have turned an ordinary drought in the American West into the "" category, with greater evaporation contributing more than a lack of rainfall.Â
The study, published in , found that evaporation accounted for 61% of drought severity in the West from 2020 to 2022, while reduced precipitation contributed 39%.
"Research has already shown that warmer temperatures contribute to , but this is, to our knowledge, the first study that actually shows that moisture loss due to demand is greater than the moisture loss due to lack of rainfall," Rong Fu, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UCLA and co-author of the study, says.
According to the , the findings mark a shift from historical patterns, where Western droughts primarily resulted from insufficient precipitation, and evaporative demand was a minor factor. This picture is complicated by rising average temperatures brought on by climate change brought on by the use of fossil fuels. Even while natural variations in rainfall still bring on droughts, there is greater heat to draw moisture from plants, soil, and bodies of water.Â
"For generations, drought has been associated with drier-than-normal weather. This study further confirms we've entered a new paradigm where rising temperatures are leading to intense droughts, with precipitation as a secondary factor," Veva Deheza, executive director of NOAA's , says.
The study examined 70 years of observational data to separate naturally occurring droughts from those intensified by human-caused climate change. Previous has concluded that drought is exacerbated by rising temperatures using climate models that account for growing greenhouse gas concentrations. However, they were unable to identify the part that evaporative demand played because of naturally fluctuating weather patterns in the absence of observational data regarding actual weather patterns.Â
When the natural weather patterns were considered, the found that 80% of the increase in evaporative demand since 2000 can be attributed to climate change. Since 2000, climate change has been the primary cause of both the expansion of the drought area and the increase in drought severity, with that percentage rising to over 90% during the drought period.Â
The analysis revealed that average drought-affected areas in the American West increased by 17% between 2000 and 2022 due to an increase in evaporative demand compared to the 1948-1999 period.
Since 2000, high evaporative demand alone can now trigger drought conditions in 66% of the historically drought-prone regions, even without decreased rainfall. Before 2000, this was true for only 26% of the area.
A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor, making it harder for rain to form, as when temperatures rise, water molecules move more rapidly and resist combining into raindrops. creates an ongoing cycle: While more water evaporates into the warming atmosphere, less falls back to Earth as precipitation. Scientists say this pattern leads to droughts that last longer and spread across larger regions as global temperatures climb.
"During the drought of 2020–2022, moisture demand really spiked," Fu says. "Though the drought began through a natural reduction in precipitation, I would say its severity was increased from the equivalent of 'moderate' to 'exceptional' on the drought severity scale due to climate change."
Moderate means the 10%–20% strongest drought, while "exceptional' means the top 2% strongest drought on the severity scale, according to the .
Climate model simulations suggest these conditions will become more common. The type of drought seen in 2020-2022, previously occurring once every thousand years, is projected to happen every 60 years by mid-century and every six years by the century's end if greenhouse gas emissions continue at current levels.
"Even if precipitation looks normal, we can still have drought because moisture demand has increased so much, and there simply isn't enough water to keep up with that increased demand," Fu says. "This is not something you could build bigger reservoirs or something to prevent because when the atmosphere warms, it will just suck up more moisture everywhere."
He says the only way to prevent droughts is to stop temperatures from increasing, which Fu explains means we have to stop emitting greenhouse gases.
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