Los Angeles Wildfires Intensify Overnight, Destroying Homes

Powerful Santa Ana winds were expected to continue for much of Los Angeles and Ventura counties through Wednesday and into Thursday, with gusts up to 70 miles an hour in some areas.

“Conditions today look extremely bad, possibly even worse than yesterday,” Frank Pereira, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said.

“We expect very strong sustained winds to continue at least into Thursday, which of course with the very dry conditions means things will remain extremely dangerous. It’s not until later in the week when the winds will slacken and efforts to fight these fires will get a bit easier,” he said.

More than 40,000 people were under evacuation orders further north in the San Fernando Valley as a second fire picked up speed and spread to nearly 500 acres, Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement early Wednesday.

Newsom, who declared a state of emergency Tuesday, said many structures had been destroyed, while footage showed thick smoke billowing over Santa Monica, just south of the Pacific Palisades neighborhood. 

California has secured federal assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Newsom said.

“Firefighters are working through the night to save lives & battle these aggressive fires,” he added.

Hundreds of thousands of customers across Los Angeles and Ventura Counties were without power Wednesday, according to PowerOutage.us.

Evacuation orders were issued for several areas, including one for part of highly populated Santa Monica where officials warned of an “immediate threat to life.”

Another fast-moving fire that broke out overnight in Altadena had reached 1,000 acres, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, said.

 

The Summit

Area of detail

Palisades Fire 

Pacific Palisades

Castellammare

Rustic Canyon

1

Pacific Ocean

1 mile

1 km

WSJ

An LAFD spokesman said a 25-year-old female firefighter suffered a serious head injury, while “several” burn victims were reported and undergoing treatment.

The cause of the fires is under investigation.

The Palisades fire was primed to explode from what fire officials call a perfect storm of dry vegetation and high winds blowing flames into a heavily populated area. But what makes this fire so unusual is its timing, in January, when the California rainy season typically extinguishes the threat of infernos until spring.

This year, however, Southern California has been off to one of its driest seasons on record. Downtown Los Angeles has received just .16 inches of rain since Oct. 1, compared with a normal total of 4.56 so far, according to the National Weather Service. Northern California, by contrast, has received a bounty of rain and snow. 

The fire threat has increased greatly in California and other parts of the West amid a hotter and drier climate and an expansion of homes into the wildland areas surrounding major cities. Sixteen of the 20 most destructive fires on record in California have broken out in the past decade, according to Cal Fire.

Victoria Albert and Jennifer Calfas contributed to this article.

Write to Gareth Vipers at gareth.vipers@wsj.com and Jim Carlton at Jim.Carlton@wsj.com