Exhausted Los Angeles firefighters braced Sunday for the return of yet more dangerously strong gusts, as California’s governor slammed “hurricane-force winds of misinformation” surrounding blazes that have killed 27 people.
The two largest fires, which have obliterated almost 16,000 hectares (40,000 acres) and razed entire neighborhoods of the second biggest U.S. city, were for the first time both more than half contained, officials announced.
But the National Weather Service warned that powerful winds and low humidity would again bring “dangerous high-end red flag fire weather conditions” from Monday, with gusts up to 130 kilometers (80 miles) per hour potentially returning.
“This is the last… we hope, of the extreme” wind events, said Governor Gavin Newsom.
It will be “the fourth major wind event just in the last three months — we only had two in the prior four years,” he told MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki” show.
Officials were accused of being unprepared for the outbreak of fires this month. Now, 135 fire engines and their crews are prepositioned to tackle new outbreaks, along with helicopters and bulldozers, said Newsom.
Firefighters, who since Jan. 7 have been battling flames, digging trenches and uprooting vegetation to create perimeters around fires non-stop, said the largest conflagration, the Palisades Fire, was 52% contained.
That fire has killed at least 10 people.
Evacuation orders were lifted this weekend for dozens of neighborhoods in upscale western Los Angeles.
Farther east, the Eaton Fire, which killed at least 17 in the Altadena suburbs, is 81% contained.
More residents were able to return to their homes there too. Others reunited with missing pets they had feared were dead.
Serena Null told AFP of her joy at finding her cat, Domino, after having to leave him behind as flames devoured her family home in Altadena.
The pair were reunited at NGO Pasadena Humane, where Domino — suffering singed paws, a burnt nose and a high level of stress — was taken after being rescued.
“I just was so relieved and just so happy that he was here,” a tearful Null told AFP.
No ‘magical spigot’
As Los Angeles learns the true scale of the devastation, political bickering has intensified.
Donald Trump, set to be sworn in Monday as U.S. president, has sharply criticized California officials.
He falsely claimed that Newsom had blocked the diversion of “excess rain and snow melt from the North.” Los Angeles’s water supplies are mainly fed via aqueducts and canals originating from entirely separate river basins farther east.
“What’s not helpful or beneficial… is these wild-eyed fantasies… that somehow there’s a magical spigot in northern California that just can be turned on, all of a sudden there will be rain or water flowing everywhere,” said Newsom.
Citing conversations with firefighters on the ground during 100 mile-per-hour windstorms that first sparked the fires, Newsom added: “There’s not a municipal system in the world that’s designed to address a fire of that acuity.”
The governor blamed Elon Musk — the Tesla and SpaceX owner poised to play a key role advising the incoming administration — “and others” for “hurricane-force winds of mis- and dis-information that can divide a country on a myriad of issues.”
President-elect Trump said he hopes to visit the region soon, “probably at the end of the week.”
Emergency officials Sunday continued to survey the damage, going house-to-house with dogs in search of human remains, and ramping up the daunting task of clearing endless tons of debris.
The region has experienced its driest start of the year since 1850, according to Newsom. Well into its typical rainy season, Los Angeles has had almost no rain since May.
Although rain is still not expected imminently, Newsom warned of the need to prepare “for potential flooding in the next week or two,” as rain, when it comes, pours down hillsides denuded by the fires.
“I prepositioned 2,500 National Guard. We’re going to start some sandbagging operations,” he said.
“We’re dealing with extremes that we have never dealt with in the past” due to the changing climate, said the governor.
