| Gabrielle Canon spent yesterday reporting near Pacific Palisades, where even people who have lived through many previous fires were stunned by the gravity of the situation. You can read her dispatch here. “It’s utter devastation here,” she said. “The iconic stretch of the Pacific Coast highway between Santa Monica and Malibu is unrecognisable.” “People aren’t strangers to the risks,” she added. “But this fire is just laying siege to these communities, and we’re seeing major structural loss in places we haven’t for a very long time. This is going to be a catastrophic event.” California governor Gavin Newsom has called the devastation wrought by the fires “unprecedented” in the state’s history. Where are the fires burning? On Tuesday morning the Palisades fire started near a nature reserve between the beach towns of Santa Monica and Malibu. It grew from 20 acres to 200 acres in 20 minutes, and now covers 16,000 acres, including much of the residential Pacific Palisades neighbourhood. It is 0% contained. Later that day, to the east, the Eaton fire started in Eaton Canyon, in Altadena, growing to cover 10,000 acres, and leaving five people dead. It is 0% contained. The Hurst fire to the north of San Fernando started to burn in the evening, and spread to 850 acres by Wednesday evening. It is now 10% contained. New fires broke out on Wednesday: two in Ventura County and Woodley Park have now been contained. The Lidia fire, in a mountainous area to the north of the city, grew to 350 acres and has been 40% contained. The Sunset fire in the Hollywood Hills has spread to 60 acres since it broke out at 6pm local time; the most recent update from officials a couple of hours ago said that it was 0% contained. Witnesses there described scenes of chaos as people tried to flee amid gridlocked traffic on roads in an evacuation zone between Hollywood Boulevard and Mulholland Drive. What kind of damage has been caused so far? As well as the five deaths reported, tens of thousands have been forced to evacuate their homes. So far, at least 2,000 homes, buildings and other businesses have been damaged or destroyed, with celebrities including Billy Crystal and Paris Hilton among those who have lost their homes. Many thousands more are under threat, and more than 450,000 people are without power. Accuweather, a commercial weather forecasting service, estimated the economic losses at up to $57bn (£46bn) so far. These before and after satellite images give a sense of the destruction. Gabrielle spoke to firefighters who said that in the Pacific Pallisades area, about four out of five houses they had seen had been destroyed, even though many residents have invested in protecting their homes to meet insurance requirements. “A lot of it came down to luck but construction also played a big part,” she said. “The firefighters saw a lot of properties where vegetation management hadn’t been done and that helped the fire spread.” Why is California so vulnerable to wildfires? The state has several features that make it highly vulnerable to wildfire spread. The climate is warm and dry, and those conditions are exacerbated at this time of year by the arrival of the Santa Ana winds, which bring dry air from the east, drying out plant matter and making it more likely to burn. As a result of those winds, fires from October to April spread much more rapidly and do much more damage than those in the summer months, when fires tend to be inland and in unpopulated forest areas. Then there is the fact that the state’s large population means that there are lots of opportunities for someone to drop a cigarette butt, leave a campfire unattended, or even set off a smoke bomb at a gender-reveal party. And, as the New York Times explains, a century or more of deliberately suppressing fires has left a lot of potential plants to burn, a strategy that has been reversed elsewhere in the state in recent years with “controlled” burns to avoid exacerbating the problem. In southern California, though, “healthy burning” is much less helpful as a mitigation than it would be in forest regions. “You can’t do the same burning and thinning,” Gabrielle said. “There are more people now living in areas that wouldn’t have been at risk before where you could now see a whole community burning down.” Why are the fires so hard to bring under control? | 