Fueled by strong Santa Ana winds gusting to 80 miles per hour, low humidity and ongoing drought conditions, wildfires erupted Tuesday in Southern California, threatening homes in Pacific Palisades.
The Palisades Fire sprang to life Tuesday morning in the hills north of Malibu, leading many residents to begin evacuating.
“In preparation for high winds, LAFD pre-deployed strike teams in and near areas prone to wildfire,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a message posted to social media. “Firefighters are now actively and aggressively responding to the #PalisadesFire with support from regional partners. Angelenos in the area are urged to heed evacuation warnings.”
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The National Weather Service has upgraded the wildfire risk to much of the Los Angeles area to “extremely critical,” the most serious designation, through Wednesday morning.
Here are the latest developments.
Live10 updates
- Tue, January 7, 2025 at 1:30 PM PST
- Firefighters work to extinguish Palisades Fire in California on January 7, 2025. (David Swanson/AFP via Getty Images)
- As the Palisades Fire continues to grow and the Santa Ana winds continue to strengthen, power outages have spiked in Los Angeles County.
- Citing the wildfire threat, Southern California Edison cut power to more than 4,000 customers in LA County, the New York Times reported. That number could rise significantly in the coming hours, as wind gusts are forecast to reach as high as 100 miles per hour between midnight and 6 a.m. ET Wednesday.
- “This fire is moving well into populated areas,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said in a Tuesday briefing, adding that power outages could hamper the ability of officials to communicate evacuation orders to local residents.
- Tue, January 7, 2025 at 1:04 PM PST
- President Biden, who is in Los Angeles, was scheduled to visit Thermal, Calif., to make remarks about the creation of a pair of new national monuments in California. But those plans were scrapped due to high Santa Ana winds, the same winds that are fueling the Palisades Fire.
- “Today’s event will be rescheduled for next week at the White House so that key stakeholders can attend,” the White House said in a statement.
- According to NBC Los Angeles, Biden was preparing to sign a proclamation that would establish the Chuckwalla National Monument south of Joshua Tree National Park and the Sáttítla National Monument in Northern California.
- Tue, January 7, 2025 at 12:54 PM PST
- The Santa Ana winds fueling California’s Palisades Fire are far from over, UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain told reporters in a Tuesday briefing.
- “The peak winds are still 12 hours away,” Swain said.
- A veritable wall of smoke can be seen pushing from the Santa Monica Mountains out to the Pacific Ocean, and evacuations have been ordered in the Pacific Palisades area.
- “Just about everything is going to get worse before it gets better,” Swain said about the winds that are helping the fire to grow.
- Tue, January 7, 2025 at 12:47 PM PST
- Cal Fire has posted a map showing where the Palisades Fire is in relation to other areas of Los Angeles. The fire has now grown to 200 acres, fire officials say.
- Tue, January 7, 2025 at 12:33 PM PST
- At least three schools near the Palisades Fire were evacuated. The Los Angeles Unified School District announced the evacuations on X shortly before the city’s fire department issued evacuation orders for people in the area.
- Tue, January 7, 2025 at 12:29 PM PST
- For residents of Southern California, Santa Ana winds are nothing new.
- “Santa Ana winds are dry and warm (often hot) winds in the Southern California area that blow in from the desert — which includes the Great Basin of the western United States, incorporating Nevada and part of Utah,” Robert Fovell, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UCLA, said in an FAQ posted to the university’s website.
- The winds can blow any time the Great Basin becomes cooler than Southern California. Most typically, that occurs between September and May.
- “The Great Basin resides at a higher elevation than the L.A. Basin, which is near sea level. The air flowing into Southern California, forming the Santa Ana winds, is subsiding. When air descends, it is compressed, and its temperature rises,” Fovell explained.
- Author Joan Didion introduced many Americans to the famous winds in her 1969 essay “The Santa Anas.”
- “It is hard for people who have not lived in Los Angeles to realize how radically the Santa Ana figures in the local imagination. The city burning is Los Angeles’s deepest image of itself,” she wrote.
- Read more from Yahoo News.
- Tue, January 7, 2025 at 12:26 PM PST
- The University of California-San Diego shared a time-lapse video taken from a fixed camera in Los Angeles showing how quickly the Palisades Fire grew on the morning of Jan. 7.
- Tue, January 7, 2025 at 12:25 PM PST
- The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, has issued some tips “to keep you and your family safe” during the heightened risk of wildfires brought on by the arrival in Southern California of Santa Ana winds.
- Those include:
- Be attentive while driving to avoid debris in the roadway
- Do not park vehicles over dry vegetation
- Outside burning is not permitted
- Avoid outdoor activities that may spark a fire
- If you see a downed power line, stay at least 100 feet away and call 911 immediately
- Create a “go bag” in case of an emergency
- Tue, January 7, 2025 at 12:12 PM PST
- The Los Angeles Fire Department issued a mandatory evacuation order for people in the vicinity of the Palisades Fire:
This is a message from NotifyLA, issued by the Los Angeles City Fire Department: Evacuation order for the Palisades Fire. Evacuation Center located at Westwood Recreation Center. People in the area of Palisades need to evacuate now due to a rapidly moving wildfire. Pack all people and pets into your vehicle and leave the area immediately. If you are not in the mandatory evacuation zone, stay off the roads to allow first responders and evacuees to move quickly. More information, including a map, can be found at www.lafd.org/alerts.
- Tue, January 7, 2025 at 12:07 PM PST
- Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass posted a message on X urging residents near the fire in Pacific Palisades to “heed evacuation warnings” as firefighters work to contain it.
