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(AP) — The windy, flame-fanning weather that put the nation’s second most populous metropolitan region on edge eased up Wednesday as firefighters made significant gains against the two massive wildfires burning around Los Angeles.
A “Particularly Dangerous Situation” red-flag warning expired without causing explosive fire growth as feared, though forecasters said gusty winds could linger into early Thursday, mostly in the mountains. Temperatures were predicted to drop, and a deep marine layer was expected to move in over the weekend, according to the National Weather Service in Los Angeles.
Those improved conditions should help fire crews make even more headway and allow residents to return to their neighborhoods to begin rebuilding.
But Santa Ana winds could return early next week.
“Good news: We are expecting a much-needed break from the fire weather concerns to close this week,” the weather service posted on social media Wednesday afternoon. “Bad News: Next week is a concern. While confident that we will NOT see a repeat of last week, dangerous fire weather conditions are expected.”
Still, firefighters and police faced new challenges. Since the beginning of the outbreak last week, authorities have arrested about half a dozen people accused of setting new, small fires that were quickly knocked down.
One suspect admitted starting a fire in a tree “because he liked the smell of burning leaves,” Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said. Another said “She enjoyed causing chaos and destruction,” the chief said Wednesday.
Video released Tuesday by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office shows looting suspects in a home in the Mandeville Canyon section of Los Angeles and an arson suspect under arrest in Azusa.
Authorities have not determined a cause for the major blazes in what is on track to become the nation’s costliest fire disaster, with at least 25 people dead and thousands of homes destroyed.
Officials facing questions over response
LA officials, who already were criticized for hydrants running dry, faced more questions. Fire officials chose not to double the number of firefighters on duty last Tuesday as winds increased, and only five of more than 40 engines were deployed, according to internal records obtained by The Los Angeles Times and interviews with fire commanders.
The department also did not call in off-duty firefighters until after the Palisades Fire erupted.
Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley defended her decisions. “I can tell you and stand before you, we did everything in our capability to surge where we could,” she told a news conference.
Crowley said that despite “limited capacity” within the department, crews were able to respond swiftly by calling for assistance from other agencies and seeking help from off-duty firefighters.
Increasing containment on the biggest fires
More manageable winds Tuesday allowed firefighters to make gains on the two most destructive fires. Almost half of the Eaton Fire just north of LA was contained, and one-fifth of the fire that destroyed much of the seaside neighborhood of Pacific Palisades was surrounded.
Both of those broke out on Jan. 7 in conditions similar to what was expected Wednesday, though winds were higher last week when they pushed flames at remarkable speed and carried fire-sparking embers for miles.
Packed and ready to go
Weary and anxious residents said they were ready to make a hasty escape amid the threat from intense winds.
Javier Vega, who said he feels like he has been “sleeping with one eye open,” and his girlfriend have planned out how they can quickly pack up their two cats, eight fish, and a leopard gecko if they get orders to evacuate.
“Typically on any other night, hearing helicopters flying overhead from midnight to 4 in the morning, that would drive anyone crazy,” Vega said. But figuring they were helping firefighters to keep the flames from threatening their neighborhood, he explained, “it was actually soothing for me to go to sleep.”
Long road of rebuilding ahead
Los Angeles authorities promised to do everything they could to help people recover and rebuild. But Mayor Karen Bass acknowledged there is no way to replace much of what has been lost.
“You’ve lost memories, family. All of the experiences that took place there are gone, and gone unexpectedly, gone rapidly,” Bass said.
This week the mayor issued an executive order to eliminate red tape and allow people to live in tiny homes and trailers while they rebuild.
Different kinds of disaster
Thomas Martin works with Calvary Disaster Relief, a group that responds to disasters all over the world. Most times, he shows up after floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes, helping people repair their roofs and rip out soggy carpets.
“This is different,” he said. “This is total devastation. There’s nothing much we can do other than pray for the folks.”
Wildfires on the rise across LA
With almost no rain in more than eight months, the brush-filled region has had more than a dozen wildfires this year, mostly in the greater Los Angeles area.
The four largest ones have scorched more than 63 square miles (163 square kilometers), roughly three times the size of Manhattan.
Searching for victims
Nearly 30 people were still missing, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said Wednesday.
Deputies have searched more than 5,500 properties for victims from the Eaton Fire and hoped to finish in that area by Thursday, he said.
One of the victims of the Eaton Fire, 95-year-old Dalyce Curry, loved wearing big hair and makeup, her family said. She hobnobbed with stars from old Hollywood, appearing as an extra with Diana Ross in “Lady Sings the Blues” and in 1956’s “The Ten Commandments.”
Entertainment community responds
The Grammy Awards ceremony will happen on Feb. 2 and focus on helping the city’s recovery.
“In challenging times, music has the power to heal, comfort and unite like nothing else,” Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. and Tammy Hurt, chair of the board of trustees, said in a letter sent to academy members that was obtained by The Associated Press.
A billionaire couple was accused of withholding water that could help stop Los Angeles’ massive wildfires. Democratic leadership was blamed for fire hydrants running dry and for an empty reservoir. Firefighters were criticized for allegedly using “women’s handbags” to fight the fires.
Those are just a few of the false or misleading claims that have emerged amid general criticism about California’s water management sparked by the fierce Los Angeles fires.
Much of the misinformation is being spread “because it offers an opportunity to take potshots at California Democratic leadership while simultaneously distracting attention from the real contributing factors, especially the role of climate change,” said Peter Gleick, a senior fellow at the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit he co-founded that focuses on global water sustainability.
Attacks on a water bank
Social media users have claimed that Stewart and Lynda Resnick, co-owners of a massive agriculture company that has a majority stake in California’s Kern Water Bank, control California’s water and have refused to lend enough to firefighting efforts.
The water bank stores up to 1.5 million acre-feet of water underground for agricultural, municipal, and industrial use during dry years. The water gets used by the Resnicks’ company, The Wonderful Company, known for such brands as Fiji Water and Wonderful Pistachios. It also serves Bakersfield and other farmers in Kern County.
But the water bank is more than 100 miles north of Los Angeles and plays no part in its water supply. The Wonderful Company said there was “zero truth” that it controls California water or has anything to do with water going to Los Angeles. Kern Water Bank didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The Wonderful Company has faced criticism over its extensive water use, especially in times of drought, and its control of what many consider a public resource. But Gleick said neither the Resnicks nor their company have anything to do with water supply issues around the wildfires.
“There are many problems with how California allocates water among users and especially the control of water by large agribusinesses, exemplified by the Resnicks, but those problems are completely unrelated to the LA fires and efforts to control them,” he said.
Claims over dry hydrants, empty reservoir
Some fire hydrants in Los Angeles ran dry in early efforts to fight the fires, prompting a swirl of criticism on social media, including from President-elect Donald Trump, against the water management policies of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. State and local officials and experts said critics were connecting unrelated issues and spreading false information. State water distribution choices were not behind the hydrant problems, they said, nor was a lack of overall supply in the region.
Officials said the hydrants were overstressed for hours as aerial firefighting wasn’t possible because of high winds. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said they were pumping plenty of water into the system, but demand was so high that it wasn’t enough to refill three million-gallon tanks in Pacific Palisades that help pressurize hydrants there.
Janisse Quiñones, head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said at a news conference that 3 million gallons of water were available when the Palisades fire started but demand was four times greater than ever seen. Hydrants are designed for fighting fires at one or two houses at a time, not hundreds, Quiñones said, and refilling the tanks also requires asking fire departments to pause firefighting. Bass said 20% of hydrants went dry.
Critics also questioned why the 117-million gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir that contributes water for drinking and firefighting in Pacific Palisades was empty when the fires broke out. Some social media users said officials should be jailed over the empty reservoir or alleged that officials view diversity, equity, and inclusion policies as more important than getting things done.
The reservoir has been empty for nearly a year awaiting repairs to a rubber cover that was required to provide safe drinking water, according to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which owns and operates it. The agency also said competitive bidding requires time.
Marty Adams, who retired last spring, was the general manager and chief engineer at LADWP when the reservoir was drained. He said it was difficult to see the full scope of damage without draining the reservoir, and once that was done officials realized the repairs would be a bigger job than expected.
Adams said the reservoir likely could not have been refilled fast enough to be of much use fighting fires.
Newsom has called for an independent investigation into the hydrants and the reservoir. At least one lawsuit has already been filed over the reservoir issue.
Fighting flames with purses?
Video of firefighters throwing water onto flames with small bags spread widely on social media. Some posts ridiculed the use of “women’s handbags” and alleged money that could have been used to buy proper equipment was spent elsewhere, such as on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, or foreign aid. But the state said the small canvas bags seen in the videos are routinely used by the Los Angeles Fire Department to fight small trash fires and can be more efficient than a long hose in some situations.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, whose district includes the Palisades fire, said misinformation is demoralizing for firefighters.
“When they hear that there’s a suspicion that they didn’t put their best foot forward, that they weren’t at their best, that they weren’t excellent in terms of the service that they deliver, of course that’s crushing,” she said.
Michelle Ciulla Lipkin, executive director of the National Association for Media Literacy Education, called the misinformation “irresponsible” and said it affects the actions people take and the way they cope with trauma.
“The spread of false information at a time of crisis is nothing short of deadly,” she said.
As if they aren’t already facing enough, firefighters in California also could encounter fire tornadoes — a rare but dangerous phenomenon in which wildfires create their own weather.
The National Weather Service warned Tuesday that the combination of high winds and severely dry conditions has created a “particularly dangerous situation” in which any new fire could explode in size. The advisory, which runs into Wednesday, didn’t mention tornadoes, but meteorologist Todd Hall said they’re possible given the extreme conditions.
Across the country from the California wildfires, researchers in Massachusetts are working to recreate a smaller-scale version of the phenomenon in a lab where it can be studied.
A look at fire tornadoes:
What is a fire tornado?
A fire whirl, fire devil, fire tornado, or even firenado — scientists, firefighters, and regular folks use multiple terms to describe similar phenomena, and they don’t always agree on what’s what. Some say fire whirls are formed only by heat, while fire tornadoes involve clouds generated by the fire itself.
The National Wildfire Coordinating Group’s glossary of wildland fire terms doesn’t include an entry for fire tornado, but it defines a fire whirl as a “spinning vortex column of ascending hot air and gases rising from a fire and carrying aloft smoke, debris and flame,” and says large whirls “have the intensity of a small tornado.”
Wildfires with turbulent plumes can produce clouds that in turn can produce lightning or a vortex of ash, smoke and flames, said Leila Carvalho, professor of meteorology and climatology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
“There is a rotation caused by very strong wind shear and a very hot, localized low-pressure system,” she said.
What is a fire tornado capable of?
Fire tornadoes can make fires stronger by sucking up air, Carvalho said. “It creates a tornado track, and wherever this goes, the destruction is like any other tornado.”
In 2018, a fire tornado the size of three football fields killed a firefighter as it exploded in what already was a vast and devastating wildfire near Redding, about 250 miles (400 kilometers) north of San Francisco in northern California. Scientists later described an ice-capped cloud that reached 7 miles (11 km) into the air and caused winds up to 143 mph (230 kph).
Research also suggests fire tornadoes can carry airborne embers, also called firebrands, over long distances, said James Urban, an assistant professor in the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. They also can change the fire’s behavior, he said.
“That’s also dangerous and scary for first responders, or really anyone,” he said. “It can change and maybe go in a different direction.”
The interaction between wind, the fire plume, and topography determines whether a tornado will develop, he said. For example, sometimes a certain topography will restrict airflow in such a way that a spiral pattern develops.
Can you make one in a lab?
Together with San José State University, Worcester Polytech is part of a Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center. In the lab in Worcester, researchers have created small fire tornadoes by putting up walls around a fire or arranging a bunch of little fires that together restrict airflow. But that’s on a much smaller scale than what’s happening with the wildfires.
“We’ve got the biggest fire lab in the U.S. for a university, but we cannot get something the size of what’s been reported at these fires,” he said. “You can’t really bottle that and put it in a lab.”
The lab can create a spinning wheel of fire in an enclosed chamber. The model illustrates how destructive such a weather phenomenon can be, said Urban.
He said the fire tornadoes spread flames quickly and produce hazardous levels of smoke, “but then the tornado aspect or the high winds add the risk of wind damage.”
The formation of the fire tornadoes, which Urban called fire whirls, illustrates the sheer intensity and danger of the California fires.
“One way in which we’re seeing just how intense these fires are is the formation of these so-called fire tornadoes or fire whirls,” Urban said. “And I think it’s a good manifestation of the destructive power of these fires.”
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom will join Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and some GOP governors around the country in directing U.S. flags to be raised to full height on Inauguration Day.
Newsom’s spokesperson Izzy Gardon confirmed Wednesday that the governor would temporarily direct the raising of flags at the state Capitol in Sacramento for President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration. Flags at the U.S. Capitol and at statehouses around the country have been lowered to half-staff in honor of the late former President Jimmy Carter.
Newsom, who has become a foil for Trump over the years, will need federal help as his state recovers from devastating wildfires that have killed more than two dozen people.
Trump has complained about American flags being flown at half-staff during his inauguration. “Nobody wants to see this, and no American can be happy about it,” he posted on his social media platform.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little, North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds noted in announcements this week that U.S. flags across their states would be lowered on Jan. 21 in honor of Carter. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a similar notice on Monday.