CA - Pacific Palisades - 30,000 People Ordered to Evacuate From L.A. Wildfires

[TexLil]

PALISADES FIRE | 2921 acres 0% containment. Extreme fire behavior, short & long-range spotting, continues to challenge firefighting efforts for the Palisades Fire. Winds gusts up to 60 MPH are expected to continue through Thursday.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1876888860690428306

 

[TexLil]

- The Palisades fire is burning through about five football fields a minute
- Tens of thousands of people have been told to evacuate as a fast-growing fire races through Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles, destroying homes
- More than 200,000 homes and buildings are without power across the county.

https://www.cnn.com/weather/live-news/los-angeles-wildfire-windstorm-01-07-25/index.html

 

[TexLil]

A third fire has erupted in LA County as firefighters battle the #PalisadesFire and #CloseFire. The #HurstFire in Sylmar has spread to 100+ acres and forced evacuations north of the 210 from Rockford to the 5/14 freeway split.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1876897335512281531

 

[iamshadow21]

I was thinking, oh, yeah, fires in California, that happens... And then I remembered. It's winter there.

I'm used to fires, awful ones, I'm Australian, it's business as usual from about August onwards. But even here, it's pretty unheard of to get such large fires in winter. Grass fires in farming land, sure, but not on this scale, threatening major urban populations.

 

[tarabull]

LA running out of water amid evacuations from Malibu to Calabasas

The raging wildfire - now burning over 2,900 acres of Los Angeles land - is rapidly ripping through the expensive celebrity enclave, home to Chris Pratt , Reese Witherspoon and Miles Teller.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[Skigh]

California's fire death toll doubles as chaos grips LA

Ten deaths have been confirmed so far in the Los Angeles fires, which have been fanned by powerful winds.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Eloise]

I was thinking, oh, yeah, fires in California, that happens... And then I remembered. It's winter there.

I'm used to fires, awful ones, I'm Australian, it's business as usual from about August onwards. But even here, it's pretty unheard of to get such large fires in winter. Grass fires in farming land, sure, but not on this scale, threatening major urban populations.

I was thinking the same. Its quite common for the US, Canada and Australia to share firefighting resources, but it would be very unusual for us to be required during our own peak fire season, we can normally help because our winter is the usual peak Canada/US season. Really scary, and I've seen some videos and its quite horrific, honestly like nothing I've seen even after the horrors of our 2019/2020 bushfires.

 

[Herat]

I was thinking the same. Its quite common for the US, Canada and Australia to share firefighting resources, but it would be very unusual for us to be required during our own peak fire season, we can normally help because our winter is the usual peak Canada/US season. Really scary, and I've seen some videos and its quite horrific, honestly like nothing I've seen even after the horrors of our 2019/2020 bushfires.

It's been 8 months since LA had rain, yet strangely enough, there was a small amount of snow in the San Bernardino mountains and brief rain in the desert to the north and northeast last weekend.

 

[TexLil]

The now five active fires and their sizes:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1877005160293007781

 

[DS2021]

A collection of live feeds

 

[DS2021]

A collection of live feeds

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

www.youtube.com

 

[bestill]

I am so sorry to read about these devastating fires. Thinking about all in their path. So scary and sad.

 

[LaborDayRN]

I'm thinking of you, LaborDayRN. I'll be hoping to hear from you in the morning and telling us you are OK.

Thank you Herat! My tree's are still standing!!
In my area thankfully the winds were not as bad as was predicted.
I want to clarify that I'm not directly in the area of the fires but am in Los Angeles County hense the worry about the wind.
I just can't wrap my head around the devistation. My heart breaks for those who lost their homes. It will take a VERY long time for those communities to recover from this.

 

[Quiet Time]

The sad fact is, is that we just haven't had any rain, as someone mentioned above.
I'm in the Central Valley and we're just now getting some rain! Really unusual.

Hope there's enough water to put out those flames...

 

[DoctorRose]

An LA SWAT team was brought in to help evacuate the 99 person nursing home in Altadena. The images of those older folks, some in hospital gowns, lined up in chairs waiting for the ambulances while the wind and smoke whipped their clothes around them and the embers were flying past was awful. The power had also been turned off to avoid downed lines sparking, so the scene was only lit by ember, flames, and the lights of ambulances. I really honor the people that are staying with them to be a familar face and take care of them.

And the residents too for being so brave. There’s a good chance that some of those caregivers were being comforted by the people they care for, even if just by their presence. JMO and my experience when I’ve worked with similar groups.

 

[kuromiiiilove]

LA Mayor Karen Bass cut fire department funding by $17.6M, focused on homeless spending— months before wildfires turned city into hellscape

The Los Angeles Fire Department had its budget cut by a staggering $17.6 million this financial year, records show — as fire crews continue to battle out-of-control blazes currently ravaging …

nypost.com

 

[Herat]

Thank you Herat! My tree's are still standing!!
In my area thankfully the winds were not as bad as was predicted.
I want to clarify that I'm not directly in the area of the fires but am in Los Angeles County hense the worry about the wind.
I just can't wrap my head around the devistation. My heart breaks for those who lost their homes. It will take a VERY long time for those communities to recover from this.

I am happy to hear you and the trees are safe.

The wind patterns are so strong and dramatic that anything can set off a blaze that sheds embers and seeds fires elsewhere. The footage of the Eaton fire region showed houses in a community along a dry riverbed and I'll bet they were worried about floods rather than their entire neighborhood being burned down by 80+ mph winds.

There had been two previous fires in a similar kind of dry mountainous terrain in the general region, the Thomas Fire in 2017 and the Mountain Fire in last November 2024. They were both downslope fire accelerated by drought, dry conditions, and high winds. If anything Pacific Palisades was one of the more obvious choices for a next high-risk area because of similar steep downslope terrain.

 

[dotr]

Hollywood stars forced to flee amid devastating Los Angeles wildfires

Large parts of Los Angeles County are under evacuation orders Wednesday as massive wildfires spread through the megacity's hilltop suburbs. Here is what some of the stars are seeing from their backyards.

www.ctvnews.ca

''Emmy-award-winning actor James Woods is among the evacuees, according to a number of posts from his X account. Starting Tuesday afternoon, Woods began sharing short clips that appear to have been shot in his yard, first showing wildfire smoke billowing through the neighbourhood, then fires spreading across nearby homes.

"Standing in my driveway, getting ready to evacuate," Woods is heard saying in a clip posted shortly before 3 p.m. Tuesday, local time. "We've got a lot of planes going over, dropping water, but…"

We were blessed to have LA fire and police depts doing their jobs so well. We are safe and out. There are several elementary schools in our neighborhood and there was an enormous community effort to evacuate the children safely. Can not speak more highly of the LA fire and LAPD. pic.twitter.com/bdsSJmvQel

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 7, 2025

 

[slowpoke]

And the residents too for being so brave. There’s a good chance that some of those caregivers were being comforted by the people they care for, even if just by their presence. JMO and my experience when I’ve worked with similar groups.

My father is gone now, but he had been living in a skilled nursing care center with dementia til the end. I was imagining if this was him going through this, and it would have been an awful situation. With the dementia, he was often angry and suspicious on any normal given day, and anything out of routine and disruptive as this would have been would surely have set him off, making taking care of him a nightmare, both for him and the caregivers.

I hope both the elderly residents and their caregivers are coping as well as can be expected today.

 

[DoctorRose]

My father is gone now, but he had been living in a skilled nursing care center with dementia til the end. I was imagining if this was him going through this, and it would have been an awful situation. With the dementia, he was often angry and suspicious on any normal given day, and anything out of routine and disruptive as this would have been would surely have set him off, making taking care of him a nightmare, both for him and the caregivers.

I hope both the elderly residents and their caregivers are coping as well as can be expected today.

Oh for sure. I guess it’s hard to describe what I wanted to say. I guess the simplest is that in a crisis, the residents are also familiar faces to their caregivers and that can really go a long way, even if they’re also making the logistics tougher.