Tens of thousands flee as homes burn and wildfire whips through L.A. hillside
A wildfire whipped up by extreme winds swept through a Los Angeles hillside dotted with celebrity residences Tuesday, burning homes and prompting evacuation orders for tens of thousands. In the frantic haste to get to safety, roadways were clogged and scores of people abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot, some toting suitcases.
The traffic jam on Palisades Drive prevented emergency vehicles from getting through and a bulldozer was brought in to push the abandoned cars to the side and create a path, according to the L.A. Fire Department.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was in Southern California to attend the naming of a national monument by U.S. President Joe Biden, made a detour to the canyon to see “firsthand the impact of these swirling winds and the embers,” and he said he found “not a few — many structures already destroyed.”
Officials did not give an exact number of structures damaged or destroyed in the Pacific Palisades wildfire, but they said about 30,000 residents are under evacuation orders and more than 13,000 structures were under threat.
And the worst could be yet to come. The blaze began around 10:30 a.m. local time, shortly after the start of a Santa Ana windstorm that the U.S. National Weather Service warned could be “life-threatening” and the strongest to hit Southern California in more than a decade. The exact cause of the fire was unknown and no injuries had been reported, officials said.
The winds were expected to increase overnight and continue for days, producing isolated gusts that could top 160 km/h in mountains and foothills — including in areas that haven’t seen substantial rain in months.
“By no stretch of the imagination are we out of the woods,” Newsom warned residents, saying the worst of the winds are expected between 10 p.m. Tuesday and 5 a.m. Wednesday. He declared a state of emergency on Tuesday.
Firefighters worked to contain a fast-moving wildfire in the Los Angeles hillsides dotted with celebrity homes as a windstorm hit Southern California on Tuesday, fanning the blaze. Traffic out of the area was jammed as residents tried to flee, and forecasters warned the worst may be yet to come with the windstorm predicted to last for days.
As of Tuesday evening, 28,300 households were without power due to the strong winds, according to the mayor’s office. About 15,000 utility customers in Southern California had their power shut off to reduce the risk of equipment sparking blaze. A half a million customers total were at risk of losing power pre-emptively.
The fire quickly consumed more than 11 square kilometres of land in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood in western Los Angeles, sending up a dramatic plume of smoke visible across the city. Residents in Venice Beach, some 10 kilometres away, reported seeing the flames. It was one of several blazes across the area.
Sections of Interstate 10 and the scenic Pacific Coast Highway were closed to all non-essential traffic to aid in evacuation efforts. But other roads were blocked. Some residents jumped out of their vehicles to get out of danger and waited to be picked up.
Resident Kelsey Trainor said the only road in and out of her neighbourhood was completely blocked. Ash fell all around them while fires burned on both sides of the road.
“We looked across and the fire had jumped from one side of the road to the other side of the road,” Trainor said. “People were getting out of the cars with their dogs and babies and bags, they were crying and screaming. The road was just blocked, like full-on blocked, for an hour.”
An Associated Press journalist saw a roof and chimney of one home in flames and another residence where the walls were burning. The Pacific Palisades, which borders Malibu about 32 kilometres west of downtown L.A., includes hillside streets of tightly packed homes along winding roads nestled against the Santa Monica Mountains and stretches down to beaches along the Pacific Ocean.
An AP photographer saw multimillion-dollar mansions on fire as helicopters overhead dropped water loads. Roads were clogged in both directions as evacuees fled down toward the Pacific Coast Highway while others begged for rides back up to their homes to rescue pets. Two of the homes on fire were inside exclusive gated communities.
Residents flee on foot
Longtime Palisades resident Will Adams said he was down in town when the fires started and immediately went to pick up his two kids from St. Matthews Parish’s school when he heard the fire was nearby. Meanwhile, he said embers flew into his wife’s car as she tried to evacuate.
“She vacated her car and left it running,” Adams said. She and many other residents walked down toward the ocean until it was safe.
Adams said he had never witnessed anything like this in the 56 years he’s lived there. He watched as the sky turned brown and then black as homes started burning. He could hear loud popping and bangs “like small explosions,” which he said he believes were the transformers exploding.
“It is crazy, it’s everywhere, in all the nooks and crannies of the Palisades. One home’s safe, the other one’s up in flames,” Adams said.
Actor James Woods posted footage of flames burning through bushes and past palm trees on a hill near his home. The towering orange flames billowed among the landscaped yards between the homes.
“Standing in my driveway, getting ready to evacuate,” Woods said in the short video on X.
Actor Steve Guttenberg, who lives in the Pacific Palisades, urged people who abandoned their cars to leave their keys behind so they could be moved to make way for fire trucks.
“This is not a parking lot,” Guttenberg told TV station KTLA. “I have friends up there and they can’t evacuate. I’m walking up there as far as I can moving cars.”
The erratic weather caused Biden to cancel plans to travel to inland Riverside County, where he was to announce the establishment of two new national monuments in the state. He remained in Los Angeles, where smoke was visible from his hotel, and was briefed on the wildfires.
The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency approved a grant to help reimburse California for the firefighting cost.
Some trees and vegetation on the grounds of the Getty Villa were burned by late Tuesday, but staff and the museum collection remain safe, Getty president Katherine Fleming said in a statement. The museum located on the eastern end of the Pacific Palisades is a separate campus of the world-famous Getty Museum that focuses on the art and culture of ancient Greece and Rome.
Film studios cancelled two movie premieres due to the fire and windy weather, and the Los Angeles Unified School District said it temporarily relocated students from three campuses in the Pacific Palisades area.
Recent dry winds, including the notorious Santa Anas, have contributed to warmer-than-average temperatures in Southern California, where there’s been very little rain so far this season.
Published at Wed, 08 Jan 2025 01:21:10 +0000
The wave of gang violence in Haiti killed thousands last year, UN says
More than 5,600 people were reported killed in Haiti last year as a UN-backed mission led by Kenya struggled to contain rampant gang violence, officials said Tuesday.
The number of killings increased by more than 20 per cent compared with all of 2023, according to the UN Human Rights Office. In addition, more than 2,200 people were reported injured and nearly 1,500 kidnapped, it said.
“These figures alone cannot capture the absolute horrors being perpetrated in Haiti, but they show the unremitting violence to which people are being subjected,” Volker Turk, UN high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement.
Among the victims were two journalists and a police officer killed when gunmen opened fire on a crowd that gathered on Christmas Eve for the much-anticipated reopening of Haiti’s biggest public hospital, which gangs had earlier forced to close.
Overall, gang violence has left more than 700,000 Haitians homeless in recent years, with many crowding into makeshift and unsanitary shelters after gunmen razed their homes.
“I saw family members being murdered, and there was nothing I could do to save them,” recalled Garry Joseph, 55, who now lives in an abandoned government office with hundreds of others who fled their neighbourhoods. “Everybody was running for their lives the night we had to leave.”
Last year’s victims also included more than 200 people killed in early December in a gang-controlled slum, many of them older Haitians, after a gang leader sought to avenge his son’s death, which he suspected of being caused by witchcraft, according to the UN. It was one of the biggest massacres reported in Port-au-Prince, the capital, in recent history.
At least 110 people were killed in Haiti’s Cite Soleil slum when a gang leader targeted elderly people he suspected of causing his child’s illness through witchcraft, the National Human Rights Defense Network says.
Among others killed last year were 315 suspected gang members or people associated with them who were lynched and more than 280 people killed by police in alleged summary executions, the UN said.
Turk is calling for more logistical and financial support for the UN-backed mission that began in early June.
About 400 police officers from Kenya are leading the mission and were joined days ago by some 150 military police officers from Central America, the majority from Guatemala. Several other nations have sent a handful of personnel or pledged to, but the overall number remains far below the 2,500 officers expected for the mission.
Commercial flights suspended
In another blow to Haiti’s stability, Sunrise Airways announced Monday that it would temporarily suspend flights to and from Port-au-Prince, 85 per cent of which is controlled by gangs. It said that the decision was based on circumstances out of its control, adding that the safety of passengers and crew members were a priority.
That leaves the country’s main international airport without any commercial flights for the third time this year.
“There is nowhere you can go,” Joseph said, noting that gangs also control all main roads entering and leaving Port-au-Prince and randomly open fire on public transport. “Nobody is safe in this country, especially in Port-au-Prince…. Everybody is just counting their days.”
In November, the airport in Port-au-Prince closed after gangs opened fire and struck three planes, including a Spirit Airlines plane that was mid-flight, injuring a flight attendant.
While the airport has since reopened, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration in December extended a ban on U.S. flights to Haiti’s capital until March 12 out of safety. The incident also sparked Canada to update a travel advisory to warn against all travel to Haiti due to the threat of gang violence, and Air Transat suspended all flights to and from Port-au-Prince until the end of April.
Rony Jean-Bernard, a 30-year-old former moto taxi driver now living in a crowded shelter, said gang violence has forced him to rely on handouts.
“I’m living on bread and sugar most of the time,” he said, noting that government officials stopped handing out free meals at his shelter about four months ago.
“Every day is like darkness. I can’t see where life is taking me with this government in place that is making promises that things will get better. I hear that every day.”
As violence keeps surging, Turk called on all nations to halt deportations to Haiti.
“The acute insecurity and resulting human rights crisis in the country simply do not allow for the safe, dignified and sustainable return of Haitians. And yet, deportations are continuing,” he said.
Under the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, some 27,800 Haitians were deported, according to Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks flight data.
Meanwhile, the neighbouring Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, deported more than a quarter million of people to Haiti last year as part of an ongoing crackdown on migrants.
Published at Tue, 07 Jan 2025 21:41:53 +0000
