SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
By Jorge Garcia and Lisa Richwine
Los Angeles: Firefighters on Wednesday contended with persistently strong and dry winds fuelling two giant wildfires that have terrified Los Angeles for eight days, testing the resolve of a city upended by the worst disaster in its history.
Officials urged residents to remain vigilant and be prepared to evacuate at a moment’s notice, with peak wind gusts forecast to last through Thursday afternoon (US time).
A San Bernardino search and rescue crew works among the ruins of the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of Los Angeles.Credit: AP
Some 6.5 million people remain under a critical fire threat after the fires consumed an area nearly the size of Washington, DC.
“We want to reiterate the particularly dangerous situation today. Get ready now and be prepared to leave,” county supervisor Lindsey Horvath told a press conference on Wednesday (US time).
Although anticipated winds of up to 112 km/h had yet to materialise, firefighters reported winds of 48 to 64 km/h combined with low humidity in a region that has failed to receive any appreciable rain in nine months.
The fires have killed at least 25 people, damaged or destroyed more than 12,000 homes and other structures, and forced as many as 200,000 people from their homes.
Some 82,400 people were under evacuation orders and another 90,400 faced evacuation warnings as of Wednesday, County Sheriff Robert Luna said.
Entire neighbourhoods have been levelled, leaving smouldering ash and rubble. Many homes only have a chimney stack left standing.
Some 8500 firefighters from the western United States, Canada and Mexico are battling the flames while twice that many other law enforcement and emergency management officials are helping keep the growth of the fires in check for three days.
A fleet of aircraft has dropped water and fire retardant into the rugged hills while ground crews with hand tools and hoses have worked around the clock since the fires broke out on January 7, with the aircraft occasionally grounded by high winds.
Hundreds of visiting firefighters and emergency workers are staying outside the Rose Bowl football stadium, temporarily converted into a base camp where colleagues have built camaraderie in between shifts. Teams work for 24 hours straight and then rest for 24 hours before going out again.
“You’re all in it for the same mission,” said Martin Macias of the St. Helena Fire Department in Northern California. “We all got into this as service, to make somebody’s day better at the worst time.”
While the fires rage on, critics have questioned whether the city was properly prepared for fire danger in the face of National Weather Service warnings about hazardous weather, even though firefighters were on alert and able to deploy assets beforehand.
Fire Chief Kristin Crowley and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass fielded queries on Wednesday about a Los Angeles Times report that fire officials had opted against ordering 1000 firefighters to remain on duty for a second shift last Tuesday as fires were beginning to grow out of control.
The Times cited critics who said the outgoing shift should have been kept on duty and that as many as 25 additional fire engines should have been moved into hillsides, including in Pacific Palisades.
Crowley defended her department’s preparation, saying it was impossible to know exactly where fires might break out and that some firefighters needed to remain in place to field ordinary emergency calls anywhere in the city.
“We did everything in our capability to surge where we could,” Crowley said.
The Times quoted Deputy Chief Richard Fields, who was in charge of staffing and equipment decisions ahead of the fire, as saying the scrutiny was welcome but that critics were too easily second-guessing decisions after the fact.
“It’s very easy to Monday-morning quarterback and sit on the couch and tell us what we should have done now that the thing has happened. What we did was based on many years of experience and also trying to be responsible for the rest of the city at any given time of that day,” Fields told the Times.
The disaster has cast a shadow over Hollywood’s annual awards season, normally a time of celebration leading up to the Oscars in March. Several red-carpet events have been postponed, cancelled or scaled back.
“It’s a heavy time right now for our industry,” actor Adrien Brody, a Golden Globe winner for his role in The Brutalist, said at the film’s premiere in London on Tuesday. “I’m a bit heartbroken for many friends and colleagues who are suffering tremendous loss in Los Angeles right now.”
