California fires sweep through Los Angeles — with 70,000 under evacuation orders and 2 reported dead

• Multiple major fires are making their way through parts of the Los Angeles area.
• The Palisades Fire had burned over 5,000 acres at 0% containment as of 8 a.m. local time Wednesday.
• One climate scientist said it was the worst wildfire in Southern California since 2011.

People across the Los Angeles area battled major fires Wednesday — with at least 70,000 people under evacuation orders, two people reported dead, and more than 1,000 structures burned.

Images of people escaping their homes, abandoning their cars, and searching for safe harbor in less-threatened parts of the area, careened across television and social media. Planes dropped water on huge flames whipping through canyons and mountain passes.

And it’s not going to get better anytime soon, officials said: Extremely dry conditions, combined with high wind gusts of more than 90 miles per hour, have helped fuel the multiple fires burning around the metropolitan area. They were zero percent contained as of Wednesday morning, officials said.

“This is apocalyptic,” one fleeing resident told a local TV station. “We’ve had small fires — nothing like this.”

The longest-burning of four active fires in Los Angeles County, the Palisades Fire, had burned 5,000 acres and caused a high number of significant injuries, officials said at a Wednesday morning briefing.

Evacuation orders and warnings have also been issued for two more fires. The Hurst fire, in the north of the region near San Fernando, covered over 500 acres, and the Eaton fire, in the northeast near Altadena, covered over 10,000 acres, both as of 11 a.m. local time, according to Cal Fire, a state agency. A fourth fire, the Woodley fire in the Sepulveda Basin, had burned 30 acres, with no evacuations yet ordered for the area.

Two people died as a result of the Eaton fire, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said.

The cause of the fires is still being investigated.

Hollywood sign area is closed as smoke chokes some LA

The fires forced some Los Angeles-area landmarks to close, including the Hollywood sign and the Los Angeles Zoo. Even miles from the fires in South Los Angeles, smoke reduced visibility to just one block, officials said.

High winds kept firefighters from dropping water on the fires, though officials said that they hoped to resume the drops as winds calm down later Wednesday.

Police also made some arrests for looting as some people tried to steal in the areas affected by the fires, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said at Wednesday morning’s press conference.

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, said in a BlueSky post on Tuesday that it was the worst wildfire in Southern California since 2011.

More than 377,000 Californians were out of power as of 8:39 a.m. local time, according to a tracking site.

As of 9 a.m., electricity provider Southern California Edison said that it had cut power to more than 35,000 homes and was considering cuts to a further 121,345 “due to heightened wildfire risk” in Los Angeles County.

California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on Tuesday.

“There’s no fire season, it’s fire year,” Newsom said at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, noting other fires California has faced in recent months, including the Franklin and Mountain fires. “It’s year-round.”

In a post on X on Wednesday, Newsom said that 1,400 firefighters were involved, with more on their way.

During the press conference, Newsom encouraged residents to heed the evacuation orders. He also announced Tuesday that the state had secured federal assistance from FEMA to support the fire response. 

“Just about everything is going to get worse before it gets better,” Swain, the UCLA scientist, said in a video update Tuesday afternoon.

Evacuees abandoned cars as traffic stalled

Palisades Drive, the major road out of the neighborhood, was packed with slow-moving lines of cars shortly after noon Tuesday, as people evacuated beneath a smoky haze and bright-orange flames licked the hillside in the distance, shown live on ABC7.

The state agency CalFire reported that the fire was on both sides of Palisades Drive.

ABC7 spoke to multiple people who were evacuating on foot, including some who had abandoned their cars on the road.

One resident told the news channel that “a whole bunch of neighbors” were stuck in their homes on Palisades Drive.

Jonathan Vigliotti, a CBS News correspondent who was on the ground as a neighborhood went up in flames, said on X that there was “mass panic in the streets.”

Historic windstorm is ‘worst possible scenario’

Officials have not yet determined how the fire started, but it erupted during a high-risk major windstorm that created extreme fire conditions in the area.

The winds were “making it extremely challenging” for firefighters on the scene, Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin M. Crowley said.

Warm, dry Santa Ana winds from the deserts of Nevada and Utah were expected to bring gusts up to 100 mph to Southern California through Wednesday morning.

The National Weather Service called the windstorm “life-threatening and destructive” and warned that these could be the strongest north winds in 14 years.

With low humidity and dry vegetation in the region, the winds created a perfect storm for fire ignition.

The NWS urged residents to be ready to evacuate, as such winds can rapidly spread any fire that breaks out.

“This is pretty much the worst possible scenario for a firefight,” David Ortiz of the LAFD told local news station KTLA.

This is a developing story. Please refresh for updates.