Firefighters Rush to Contain L.A. Blazes as Death Toll Rises to 24 The Eaton fire has killed 16 people, officials said. Firefighters have made progress on the wildfires over the weekend, but forecasters warn of fiercer winds this week.
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The blazes tearing through Los Angeles have killed at least 24 people, officials said on Sunday, as forecasters issued a rare red flag warning for strong winds expected to hit the area from late Monday through Wednesday.
Over the weekend, firefighters tried to take advantage of calmer winds, allowing them to progress against the two biggest blazes, the Palisades and Eaton fires.
The Eaton fire has killed at least 16 people, making it one of the deadliest in California history. According to Sheriff Robert Luna of Los Angeles County, another 16 people were reported missing in the areas of the two largest fires. Officials expect those numbers to rise.
The slower winds are not likely to last, as forecasters warned of fiercer gusts to come. The shifting nature of the winds has made it difficult to predict how the wildfires might spread.
Here’s what else to know:
Wind conditions: The strong Santa Ana winds that have been helping to fuel these fires are expected to pick up again late Monday, prompting the National Weather Service on Sunday to issue a rare “particularly dangerous situation” red flag warning for three areas across Ventura and Los Angeles counties from early Tuesday morning until noon on Wednesday. Brian Hurley, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center of the National Weather Service, cautioned that while the winds this week may not be quite as strong as they were last week, their long duration could make the fire risk worse.
Looking ahead: Los Angeles will get a break from fire-enabling weather later this week, said Rich Thompson of the National Weather Service. Wind speeds will drop on Thursday and continue to be light over the weekend. “For this weekend, things are looking much cooler,” he said. “Higher humidity, just your typical sea breeze winds.”
Slow progress: Crews have contained 13 percent of the 23,700-acre Palisades fire and 27 percent of the 14,000-acre Eaton fire in the San Gabriel Mountains, according to Cal Fire, and the west side of the Palisades fire has been contained. More than 100,000 residents are still under evacuation orders, and tens of thousands more have been warned they may have to evacuate.
Private firefighters: Some property owners did not rely on public agencies to help protect their homes, turning instead to private firefighters who have become a coveted resource in some of Southern California’s most wealthy — and most fire-threatened — communities.
Early moments: While it remained unclear what started the fires, power lines near the Eaton and Palisades fires were on when those blazes started and may have played a role.
The scale of destruction: The combined area burned by the past week’s fires — nearly 40,000 acres, according to Los Angeles County officials — is larger than each of the city limits of San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Boston, or Miami. Together, the Eaton and Palisades fires have damaged more than 12,000 “structures,” referring to houses, cars, and outbuildings.
The victims: The identities of more people who died in the blazes have been released.
Water Supply Issues Prompt Investigation into Los Angeles Firefighting Response
California Governor Gavin Newsom has launched an investigation into reported water supply challenges that may have hampered firefighting efforts during the recent Los Angeles wildfires. The investigation, announced on January 10, comes in response to concerning reports about loss of water pressure in local fire hydrants and issues with water availability from the Santa Ynez Reservoir.
In a letter to Los Angeles Department of Water and Power CEO Janisse Quiñones and L.A. County Public Works Director Mark Pestrella, Newsom expressed particular concern about how these water supply issues potentially impacted home protection and evacuation efforts. While acknowledging that local fire hydrants are not designed for large-area fire suppression, he emphasized that the loss of hydrant supply likely compromised firefighting capabilities in certain areas.
The situation has proven especially challenging as firefighters battle multiple blazes, with the Palisades Fire being the most significant.
As of January 12, the fires have claimed at least 16 lives, destroyed thousands of homes, and burned over 40,000 acres, according to the Los Angeles Medical Examiner's Office.
Water System Challenges and Infrastructure Issues
The Santa Ynez Reservoir, a critical 117-million-gallon water storage facility serving the Pacific Palisades area, was offline for mandatory drinking water regulation maintenance when the Palisades Fire began. While the LADWP maintains that the water supply remained robust despite this closure, they have initiated their own investigation into water system resilience.
LAFD Public Information Officer Erik Scott acknowledged that water availability became problematic at higher elevations, where limited tank replenishment affected hydrant functionality. During a news conference, LADWP CEO Quiñones explained the fundamental challenge of using an urban water system to combat wildfires of this magnitude.
Budget and Resource Concerns
The crisis has sparked debate about fire department funding and resources. L.A. Fire Chief Kristin Crowley has raised concerns about departmental understaffing and underfunding, citing a December 2024 memo warning of "unprecedented operational challenges" due to position eliminations and overtime reductions. However, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass maintains that recent budget adjustments did not impact the emergency response to these fires.
Governor Newsom has emphasized that California's firefighting budget has not been reduced, noting that the state has significantly expanded its firefighting capability and aerial fleet.
However, in a recent NBC Meet the Press interview, he stressed the importance of obtaining objective answers about the water system's performance during the crisis.
Expert Assessment
Some experts have suggested that the extraordinary conditions, including hurricane-force Santa Ana winds, would have overwhelmed any water system globally. Newsom's newly launched California Fire Facts website acknowledges that urban water systems are designed for structure fires rather than massive firestorms of this nature.
The governor's investigation aims to provide comprehensive answers about the water supply issues while avoiding premature conclusions. As the situation continues to develop, both state and local authorities are focused on understanding and addressing these critical infrastructure challenges to better prepare for future emergency responses.
While Donald Trump rages on Truth Social—sharing memes and baselessly blaming Democratic politicians in California for the devastating LA wildfires—Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) fears he will withhold disaster aid from the state in a bid to score political points.
In an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Newsom told NBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff that he is worried about Trump revoking the federal disaster aid that President Biden has promised California for the next 6 months—a threat that Trump, in fact, has made and carried out multiple times in the past.
Trump does not appear to have explicitly made such threats in the wake of the LA wildfires, which have killed at least 16 people and damaged at least 10,000 structures, according to officials. But Trump has spent the past several days blaming local Democratic politicians for the fires, including LA Mayor Karen Bass and Newsom, who he calls “Newscum” and has blasted as “incompetent.”
“One of the best and most beautiful parts of the United States of America is burning down to the ground. It’s ashes, and Gavin Newscum should resign,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday. “This is all his fault!!!”
President Biden said Friday he’s “praying” the Trump administration will continue providing aid to California.
Newsom also said on Meet the Press that Trump has yet to respond to an invitation he sent to the president-elect on Friday to visit LA and “meet with the Americans affected by these fires, see the devastation firsthand, and join me and others in thanking the heroic firefighters and first responders who are putting their lives on the line,” according to a copy of the letter Newsom posted on X.
“I called for him to come out, take a look for himself. We want to do it in the spirit of an open hand, not a closed fist. He’s the president-elect. I respect the office,” Newsom told Soboroff.
Spokespeople for Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones on Sunday.
Vice President-elect JD Vance said on Fox News Sunday that Trump “would love to visit California,” but did not directly answer whether or not he would withhold federal aid to the state, saying only: “President Trump cares about all Americans. He is the president for all Americans, and I think that he intends to have FEMA and other federal responses much, much better and much more clued into what’s going on there on the ground.”
Newsom also addressed Trump’s misguided statements about California’s water supply, saying, “That mis- and disinformation I don’t think advantages or aids any of us. Responding to Donald Trump’s insults, we would spend another month. I’m very familiar with them. Every elected official that he disagrees with is very familiar with them.”
Meanwhile, in an interview on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told Jake Tapper in response to a question about Trump’s attacks on Newsom: “We need to make sure that they are never politicized. It doesn’t matter if you are Democrat or Republican—these types of weather events, they do not discriminate.”
With just over a week until Inauguration Day, it feels like we’re getting a preview—or, perhaps, a reminder—of what it’s like to live under a Trump presidency: Petty insults abound, and those most in need of the government’s support are forgotten.
California wildfires devastate Altadena: How one man tried to save his block
Flames were licking his fence, he was choking on smoke, and bullets were whizzing by his leg. Despite it all, Tristin Perez never left his Altadena home during the deadly Eaton fire.
The 34-year-old carpenter felt he had no choice but to stay despite the life-threatening conditions. A police officer told him and his neighbors to evacuate early on Wednesday morning as the fire raced down the hillside above them.
Instead, Perez insisted on trying to save his property and his neighbors’ homes along El Molino Avenue. But he didn’t even have a garden hose. He ripped the filters from two water pitchers and doused the ground, his wooden fence, and every ember he could reach.
"Your front yard is on fire, palm trees lit up – it looked like something out of a movie," Perez told Reuters in an interview in his driveway. "I did everything I could to stop the line and save my house, help save their houses."
His one-story yellow duplex survived. So did two more homes next door. Across the street, entire houses burned to the ground. A single brick chimney stood alone in the wreckage.
"When you look across the street... If I wasn’t here, that is what would have happened," he said. "I felt so bad for them. It’s absolutely awful."
Perez mourned the losses here. He moved to Altadena three years ago and rented his two-bedroom unit. He fell in love with the tranquil and tight-knit community of about 40,000 people north of Los Angeles, where neighbors are friendly and look out for each other.
As of late Saturday, officials said the Eaton fire was 15% contained, and that the fire threat remains high across the Los Angeles area. Overall, six simultaneous blazes that have ripped across Los Angeles County neighborhoods since Tuesday have killed at least 16 people and damaged or destroyed 12,000 structures.
Eleven of them were killed in the Eaton fire here. The death toll is expected to grow when firefighters can conduct house-to-house searches.
In Altadena, fire crews were walking house to house with shovels, looking for hot spots that were still burning. Sheriff’s deputies patrolled the streets and blocked residents from returning to their homes at checkpoints.
FAST-MOVING FLAMES
Perez provided a harrowing account of how the Eaton fire rapidly intensified early on Wednesday. The first indication something was wrong came on Tuesday evening. His neighbors were outside staring at a faint glow far in the distance.
"To be honest, I didn’t really consider it too much of a threat just because it was way out there," he said.
Then the winds began to howl and blow toward them. The fire was coming right at them at alarming speed. "It looked like it was sprinting down a football field. It was flying," Perez said.
Then he and his neighbors lost sight of the flames. Perez said that was the most nerve-wracking part of the night.
That soon changed. Looking up his street 200 yards away, entire homes and businesses were engulfed in flames. Perez told his neighbors to leave. "I was willing to go to the end. I saw the firefighters, everybody was already shorthanded, so I wanted to do my part," he said.
Fire and law enforcement officials discourage people from staying at their homes during wildfires because it can put residents and first responders in danger.
But Perez felt he had a shot to fight off the flames because there was an empty, mostly dirt lot between him and the advancing fire. The downside was that his neighbors on the north side also stored boxes of ammunition on their property.
Soon explosions began erupting. Breathing became unbearable. Perez felt something whiz past his leg while standing in his yard. The fire had ignited the bullets stored next door, posing a fresh danger.
"Bullets flying, gas tanks exploding, embers raining down, you can’t see anything," Perez said.
He kept dousing his property for hours through the night. His home is still standing. Many others weren’t as fortunate as thousands of structures were destroyed around him.
'HOW TO REBUILD'
Around the corner, Pablo Scarpellini stared at the burned ruins of his wife’s Spanish immersion preschool, Rayuela. The entire building had collapsed, and a small playground slide sat half-melted in the back.
"It’s devastating," Scarpellini told Reuters. “But I’ve cried so much the last few days, now my vision is more of hope and trying to visualize how to rebuild it."
He said his wife, Liliana Martinez, the preschool’s founder and director, was scrambling to find an alternative for her 15 students. "We’re doing as much as we can to relocate the kids," he said.
Perez, wearing a black tank top and shorts, swept tree limbs and brush out of his driveway on Saturday while the front corner of his yard smoldered. His white picket fence had melted in several spots. Two palm trees in his front yard bore black scars at the top.
Perez has no power or running water. Firefighters stationed at a nearby hardware store let him use their equipment to charge his phone so he could tell a few family members and friends that he had survived. A downed power line was draped across his street as utility workers surveyed the widespread damage.
While firefighters made progress containing the Eaton fire through the weekend, Perez said he is preparing for the threat to return if the winds shift.
"Lord forbid anything happens, I will be ready," he said. Perez also plans to volunteer for the community cleanup in the months ahead to help local restaurants and businesses reopen.
"This isn’t the end of Altadena. This is just turning the next chapter."
The pitbull mix arrived at Pasadena Humane covered in ash, his paw pads ulcerated from walking on fire debris, and his lungs choked with smoke. A good Samaritan found the dog lying in rubble in Altadena, wrapped him in a blanket, and brought him to the shelter.
Still too weak to walk on Saturday, Canela was reunited with his owner - thanks to CNN’s coverage of the act of kindness. The injured pet continues to receive medical treatment and is one of more than 400 animals that have arrived at the Pasadena facility since the Southern California wildfires began last Tuesday.
Animal facilities, veterinarian,s and rescue organizations have taken in and assisted dogs, horses, donkeys, goats, sheep and other creatures that were displaced by the ongoing fires along with their human owners.
The Humane Society began accepting animals as a temporary shelter as families evacuated their homes. But circumstances evolved, along with the widening disaster, which has left 13 people dead, burned 39,000 acres (157.83 square kilometers), and forced at least 153,000 people to leave their homes.
"We are now seeing more injured animals coming in," said Dia DuVernet, president and chief executive of Pasadena Humane. “We're also starting to see people who brought their animals for what we thought would be a temporary shelter, but they don't have homes to go back to, and so it's turning into a longer-term sheltering situation."
Some animals bear the scars of the ordeal, like a severely burned Husky with singed fur and burned paws.
“He hasn't had anybody come back to reclaim him,” said the humane society’s chief veterinarian, Dr. Maria Pyrdek, adding that the dog was showing gradual signs of recovery. “He wasn't even lifting his head when he came in. He was just completely exhausted.”
The organization has entered a new phase of this disaster response, search rescue,e and recovery, DuVernet said. Pasadena Humane is prioritizing calls to help live animals in the burn zones -- including eight injured peacocks.
One man in Altadena contacted the Humane Society for help getting water to cows, sheep and a bull that he had been unable to reach because the fire destroyed a bridge.
"We've been strategizing how we can get a significant amount of water over this ravine and up this hill so that these animals don't perish from dehydration," said DuVernet.
Throughout the crisis, DuVernet said the community had provided enough donations to fill five U-Haul trucks.
HORSE AND DONKEY REFUGE
In nearby Burbank, the Los Angeles Equestrian Center has taken in around 400 animals, mostly horses but also a few donkeys. Some were brought in by owners who evacuated their homes and others by law enforcement who found them running loose.
The Eaton fire on the east side of Los Angeles hit a region filled with horse lovers.
"People have horses in their backyards in these neighborhoods,” said Leigh Anne Claywell, general manager of the equestrian center. "It’s been a horsey area for a long time. This is kind of where the Hollywood Western was born, because of all the cowboys and the ranches that used to be in this area.”
Some of the evacuated horses appeared stressed when they arrived in their new environment, Claywell said, "but by and large, everybody seems to have kind of stumbled into a routine."
On Saturday, dozens of volunteers helped walk and feed horses and clean the grounds. The center was packed with donations of apples and carrots for the animals and pizza and sandwiches for humans. Smoke was visible from the Palisades fire to the west and the Eaton fire to the east.
At one point, all of the center's stalls had been full. Spaces opened up as some evacuation orders were lifted and owners were able to reclaim their animals.
Karrie Saydah was picking up her two donkeys and two horses that she had brought to the center when she was forced to evacuate her home at 3:45 a.m. on Wednesday morning.
"It was so scary, a fire in the sky kind of thing," Saydah said.
Saydah borrowed a horse trailer from a neighbor and headed to a site near the Rose Bowl only to learn it was full. After finding space for horses Zippy and Sonny at the equestrian center in Burbank, she went back with donkeys Midge and Thelma.
On Saturday, Saydah said she was thankful to the staff and volunteers and said her animals likely will miss their generous supply of treats.
"There is so much help and so much goodwill being shared,” Saydah said.
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