A part of the wealthy Westwood 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 neighbourhoods.
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 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 Joe Biden noted that the death toll might rise and a lot of people were unaccounted for.
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The Palisades fire between Santa Monica and Malibu, was 8 per cent contained Friday. To the east, firefighters had contained 3 per cent 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 could take months to come to any firm conclusions. But power lines near the Eaton and Palisades fires were on when those blazes erupted 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.
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 neighbours called “an angel”.
[ LA fires: Calmer winds help firefighters as death toll hits 10Opens in new window ]
The area burned by the various fires is larger than the footprint of San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Boston or Miami. As of Friday afternoon, about 180,000 people were under evacuation orders, and hundreds of thousands of electricity customers were without power.
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”.
Biden offered assurances that the federal government would help rebuild the affected areas, and Deanne Criswell, the Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator, said the agency was ready, and sufficiently funded, to support displaced residents.
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.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.