At least five people are dead and several injured as multiple fires burn, including most destructive in city’s history. Los Angeles firefighters were already stretched thin on Tuesday night, as a ferocious, fast-moving fire engulfed mansions and businesses in the Pacific Palisades, one of southern California’s most luxurious coastal neighborhoods.
![[Lois Beckett]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2024/04/01/Lois_Beckett,_L.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Then, just after 6 pm local time, a second fire broke out, this one on the opposite side of the city, near Pasadena, home to universities such as CalTech and Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Furious gusts of wind, some moving as fast as 60 to 70mph (96 to 112km/h), drove both fires to spread quickly across the bone-dry landscape. The wind was fast enough that it threatened to rip an open car door off its hinges, and so full of dirt and debris that it was painful to the eyes.
![[A church burnt from the Palisades wildfire lies in ruins in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/2761e2791681772edaa99245ef1ebb3f79950723/0_0_4711_3141/master/4711.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
At around 10.30pm local time, a third major fire broke out, this one in the San Fernando valley, north-west of the city. By 3am on Wednesday morning, fire hydrants in the Pacific Palisades had temporarily run dry, overwhelmed by the demand, according to the city’s department of water and power. The winds were so intense that emergency aircraft fighting the fires had to be grounded overnight.
![[Black smoke and fire cloud a street]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f524d3b12ad6b580c2fbc8c0d6bbe5f7b4aac879/0_0_7777_5185/master/7777.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” James McDonnell, the LA police department chief, said Wednesday morning, calling the situation “unprecedented”. By dawn on Wednesday, the air across Los Angeles smelled charred and neighborhoods closer to the fires were heavy with smoke and ash. A fourth fire had started in the San Fernando valley not long after 6 am local time, creating a ring of wildfires circling half of the city. By midday, an estimated quarter of a million people in Los Angeles were without power.
![[The carcass of a burnt car while a home burns during the Eaton fire in Altadena.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/5fdfa9785be4dfbc9d7b3e8712be5ef34a05d5c0/0_0_7937_5409/master/7937.jpg?width=465&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
