The Palisades fires expanded east quickly, threatening an area near the Getty Center. Gov. Gavin Newsom said he wanted answers about whether there had been enough water to fight the initial fires.
A part of the Brentwood area of Los Angeles came under mandatory evacuation orders Friday evening as the Palisades fire quickly expanded. The area threatened by the expansion of the wildfire, the largest in the Los Angeles area, included the Getty Center as well as parts of the Brentwood and Encino neighborhoods.
Wildfires have ripped across more than 35,000 acres of the Los Angeles area this week, killed at least 11 people and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee from their homes.
California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said he was ordering an independent review to determine why firefighters ran out of water early on, calling the situation “deeply troubling.” President Biden noted that the death toll might rise and that there were a lot of people who are unaccounted for.
The Palisades fire between Santa Monica and Malibu, was 8 percent contained on Friday. To the east, firefighters had contained 3 percent of the Eaton fire, near Altadena and Pasadena. Both fires now rank in the top five most destructive fires in California’s history.
It is not clear what ignited the fires, and investigators will likely take months to come to any firm conclusions. But power lines near the Eaton and Palisades fires were on when those blazes erupted on Tuesday. Energy experts said that was concerning, because electrical equipment has often ignited infernos during periods of high wind in California and elsewhere. And the dry, windy conditions that help the fires spread are poised to persist.
The victims: Among those who died was one man in his 60s who lived in his childhood home and drove a bloodmobile; another man, in his 80s, was a retired aerospace engineer and an active deacon in his church; and a woman who was a retired pharmacy technician whom neighbors called “an angel.”
Scale of destruction: The area burned by the various fires is larger than the footprint of San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Boston or Miami. As of Friday afternoon, about 100,000 people were under evacuation orders, and hundreds of thousands of electricity customers were without power.
False alerts: Los Angeles County emergency management officials said the erroneous evacuation alert that was transmitted this week went out to nearly 10 million residents, or roughly the entire population of the county. The fires’ effects on cellphone towers could have caused the problem, the officials said, calling the error a “serious breach of public trust.”
Federal response: Mr. Biden offered assurances that the federal government would help rebuild the affected areas, and Deanne Criswell, the FEMA administrator, said the agency was ready, and sufficiently funded, to support displaced residents.
Arrests: At least 18 people have been arrested in the Eaton and Palisades fires, on charges of looting, identity theft, possession of narcotics and possession of burglary tools, officials said. National Guard units have been deployed to secure evacuation zones.
On Friday, even as slowing wind speeds increased hopes that firefighters would contain the blazes, dry vegetation and steep terrain pushed the Palisades fire, the biggest, east, putting a new swath of Los Angeles under mandatory evacuation orders.
The blaze was burning along the tops of the ridges of Mandeville Canyon, said Kenichi Haskett, a division chief with the Los Angeles County Fire Department, on Friday night. The fire tore through a steep area full of dry vegetation and threatened the neighborhood of Encino in the north.
The spread was being driven by the landscape rather than wind, Mr. Haskett said. “We’re not getting strong winds the way we got on Tuesday and Wednesday.” The Palisades fire has now burned more than 21,000 acres in five days.
The rains that usually fall in autumn and early winter did not come, leaving most of Southern California bone dry and leaving vegetation primed to burn. Most locations south of Ventura County have recorded about a quarter-inch of rain or less in the past eight months, while the Los Angeles area has received only sprinklings of rain since April.
That means the Santa Ana winds, the strong, dry gusts that have driven the wildfires, have had a particularly dramatic effect. Even as they have subsided, the parched vegetation has continued to fuel the Palisades fire, experts said. Stronger winds are expected to return to Los Angeles and Ventura counties Saturday afternoon, reaching the highest speeds overnight into Sunday morning and heightening the risk of rapid wildfire spread.
Wind speeds over the fire were light — under 15 miles per hour — on Friday night, said Dave Gomberg, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. In comparison, Wednesday saw wind gusts of over 90 m.p.h. “I think a big component is the fuels are exceptionally dry,” Mr. Gomberg said of Friday’s expansion.
The Palisades fire was “following the terrain and the fuels,” said Craig Clements, director of the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center at San Jose State University. Fires thrive in hilly terrain and move faster uphill than downhill, he said, adding, “The steeper the terrain, the faster the fire can go.”
The fire chewing its way through Mandeville Canyon is a “plume-dominated fire,” that is being fueled by its own wind, said Redondo Beach Fire Chief Patrick Butler, a former assistant chief for the Los Angeles Fire Department who has led the response to many Southern California fires. Such blazes often shoot upward and then collapse, scattering embers for miles in concentric patterns, he said. On Friday evening, ash was falling in the Brentwood neighborhood to the south of the canyon.
Wildfires are notoriously hard to fight in Mandeville Canyon, which has poor radio communication and an extremely narrow road, Mr. Butler said: “There’s basically one way in and one way out.”
The Palisades fire in Los Angeles lurched east late Friday night, prompting emergency officials to expand mandatory evacuation orders to Brentwood, including the Getty Center. Like the nearby Pacific Palisades, Brentwood is among the most affluent Los Angeles neighborhoods, a place for manicured suburban living that keeps city life just within reach.
How did fires start?
Officials have begun investigating what caused the wildfires that ripped through the Los Angeles area and are still burning. No cause has been identified yet for any of the big blazes — Palisades, Eaton or Hurst.
One major utility in the region, Southern California Edison, is examining whether transmission lines near the origins of the Eaton and Hurst fires could have sparked either blaze. On Thursday evening, SCE told state regulators that insurance companies demanded the company preserve electric equipment as possible evidence in the Eaton Fire, though it emphasized that no investigation has found evidence that its equipment ignited the fire. SCE did not mention the Hurst Fire in the report.
Los Angeles Fire Department arson investigators are examining the brushy hillside near Pacific Palisades where the fire started. Arson investigators — also called fire investigators — determine how and where fires ignited, whether by power lines, a tossed cigarette or any of the other ways people or human infrastructure cause fires, either on purpose or accidentally. It doesn’t necessarily mean the fire involved criminal arson.
The fires broke out amid a blustering siege of Santa Ana winds. The area was primed to burn after more than eight months without meaningful rain. Southern California Edison had cut power to some areas but not others as a fire prevention measure.
The Palisades Fire broke out about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday on a brushy hillside between a residential street and a ridgeline trail in Temescal Gateway Park with sweeping views of the San Gabriel Mountains and Santa Monica Bay. The 20,438-acre fire has destroyed at least 5,300 structures and killed one person.
Los Angeles Water and Power Department manages electric service to the community. Many power lines and transmission lines are buried underground in the area. The Los Angeles Fire Department is leading the investigation in the Palisades Fire.
Rumors have spread about the fire’s cause. But in a Thursday morning briefing, Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley didn’t respond directly to questions about specific claims and said the fire’s cause was “currently under investigation.”
The Eaton Fire ignited shortly after 6:15 p.m. Tuesday just east of Altadena near Mount Wilson Toll Road, a historic roadway ascending Mount Wilson. At least five people were killed in the 13,956-acre fire and 4,000 to 5,000 structures damaged or destroyed, according to early estimates.
The Hurst Fire broke out about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday in a park and burned 771 acres around Sylmar near Santa Clarita.
The Kenneth Fire was first reported about 3:30 p.m. Thursday in an open space preserve near Calabasas and the border of Los Angeles and Ventura counties. The Ventura County Fire Department is still investigating what caused the fire. Police questioned a man that residents said was trying to light a fire in Woodland Hills about an hour after the Kenneth Fire started. As of Friday morning, the forward progress of the Kenneth Fire stopped at 1,000 acres.
Bob Marshall, founder of the technology firm Whisker Labs, told the New York Times that his company’s power grid sensors detected problems with power lines near the locations where wildfires started in the L.A. area. Marshall said the grid “clearly was stressed” leading up to the fires, although he cautioned that doesn’t necessarily mean the fires were caused by power lines.
