Thousands flee as wildfire whips through L.A. hillsides
Firefighters scrambled to corral a fast-moving wildfire in the Los Angeles hillsides dotted with celebrity homes as a fierce windstorm hit Southern California on Tuesday, fanning the blaze that has forced thousands of residents to flee.
The fire that swiftly consumed part of the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood in western Los Angeles sent residents fleeing to the clogged Pacific Coast Highway. About 30,000 residents are under evacuation orders and more than 13,000 structures are under threat from the blaze, said Kristin Crowley, fire chief of the L.A. Fire Department.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom says many structures have already been destroyed.
One resident described seeing people crying and screaming as they ran away carrying their children and pets.
Forecasters warned the worst may be yet to come with the windstorm predicted to last 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. Roughly half a million utility customers were at risk of having their power shut off to reduce the risk of equipment sparking blazes.
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.
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.
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 neighbourhood that 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.
Residents flee on foot
Longtime Palisades resident Will Adams said he was down in town when the fires started and immediately went to pick his two kids up from St. Matthews Parish’s school, which is now in the line of the fire.
His wife, who was at home, was driving down the main evacuation road for residents in the upper part of the neighbourhood when embers flew into her car.
“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 seen a fire this low into the neighbourhood in the 56 years he’s lived there.
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 and area resident Steve Guttenberg 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 U.S. President Joe Biden to cancel plans to travel to inland California’s Riverside County, where he was to announce the establishment of two new national monuments in the state. Biden will deliver his remarks in L.A. instead.
Winds driving flames higher
The National Weather Service said the wind that was expected to peak early Wednesday could be the strongest Santa Ana windstorm in more than a decade across Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
The winds will act as an “atmospheric blow-dryer” for vegetation, bringing a long period of fire risk, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California, Los Angeles and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
“We really haven’t seen a season as dry as this one follow a season as wet as the previous one,” Swain said Monday.
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.
Southern California hasn’t seen more than 0.25 centimetres of rain since early May. Much of the region has fallen into moderate drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Meanwhile, up north, there have been multiple drenching storms.
Areas where gusts could create extreme fire conditions include the charred footprint of last month’s wind-driven Franklin Fire, which damaged or destroyed 48 structures, mostly homes, in and around Malibu.
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
