The fires ravaging the Palisades and Eaton districts of LA are threatening to spread to the neighbourhoods of Brentwood and Mandeville Canyon, where celebrities including Harrison Ford and Arnold Schwarzenegger are being told to evacuate.
The Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office has confirmed that the death toll from the wildfires which began on Tuesday morning has risen to 16, 11 from the Eaton and five from the Palisades fire.
Officials expect the number to rise as searches of the scorched neighbourhoods continue and displaced residents report their missing loved ones.
The fires are being exacerbated by the region’s infamous Santa Ana winds, which emergency workers are afraid will push the flames towards densely populated areas in the Hollywood Hills and landmarks including the J Paul Getty Museum and University of California.
Residents have also been hit with a slew of evacuation notices, with drivers reporting gridlock on Sunset Boulevard as thousands try to flee the state, which LA County Sheriff Robert Lune said resembles the aftermath of an atomic bomb attack.
Firefighters have been launching a fierce battle against the thick smoke and terrifying flames in Mandeville Canyon, near the Pacific Coast, this morning – where a handful of A-listers have been evacuated from their multi-million-pound properties amid a concentrated effort on containing the blaze.
LeBron James, who was forced to leave his £18 million Brentwood mansion yesterday, posted on X: “I pray this nightmare ends soon! So many prayers”.
Helicopters could be seen dumping huge amounts of water on the neighbourhood on Saturday in a desperate attempt to stop the fire spreading further. There are also fears that the flames could jump over the Interstate 405 and destroy more homes in the San Fernando Valley area.
Over 150,000 people have been given evacuation orders and the two fires are estimated to have consumed around 56 square miles of land, a wider expanse than the city of San Francisco. The blaze has also burned down over 12,000 homes, apartment buildings, businesses and vehicles, with over 57,000 structures designated as at risk.
The strong Santa Ana winds, which can sweep from the desert across southern California with gusts of up to 100mph, have been blamed for turning the wildfires into the shockingly destructive infernos they have become, worsened by LA’s ongoing drought, which has seen no rain fall for around eight months.
One panicked woman who had been stuck in unmoving traffic on the stretch for two hours told ABC that there “was a visibility when I first got here, a little bit of blue sky,” which had since “unfolded to absolute ugliness”.
Officials have declared a major public health emergency in Los Angeles due to “severely degraded air quality”, with ash contaminating local water supplies and the ocean amid an ongoing effort to identify the cause of the largest fires.
Governor Gavin Newsom has also ordered an investigation into why a 440 million-metre reservoir was out of service when the emergency began and some water hydrants had run dry. It is estimated the cost of the fires, which could continue to burn for weeks yet before they are fully contained, may be in the tens of billions.