The most extreme level of a red flag fire warning, a “particularly dangerous situation,” returned to parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties Wednesday morning. The time period of highest risk will take place from just before sunrise through midday.
Mountain wind gusts were expected to rise to 45 mph to 55 mph, with local gusts up to to 60 mph, the National Weather Service office in Oxnard said. Forecasters expect Wednesday will be noticeably windier than Tuesday.
This article is provided free of charge to help keep our community safe and supported during these devastating fires.
Ventura County is expected to be at particular risk if a fire sparks. The northern Ventura County mountains may get stronger winds than typically seen in a Santa Ana wind event.
Gusts reached as high as 54 mph — in the Santa Susana Mountains — Wednesday morning.
“We are not out of the woods yet, and people need to stay on guard for a fast-moving fire,” Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Oxnard, said.
Firefighters warned that vegetation is critically dry, “and receptive to fire,” L.A. Fire Department Capt. Erik Scott said of the Palisades fire area. “We’re worried about the winds stirring up this 23,000-acre smoldering debris pile and casting embers on unburned brush.”
The “particularly dangerous situation” returned at 3 a.m. for portions of the San Fernando Valley and Ventura County, including Northridge, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Camarillo and Fillmore.
A “particularly dangerous situation” signifies the most extreme level of a red flag fire warning, although officials note that Wednesday’s winds will not be as severe as the historic windstorms that fueled the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires last week.
The “particularly dangerous situation” was expected to last through 3 p.m. Wednesday.
“Even though it is weaker,” Kittell said, “this is still a concerning period. It’s still really dry, and these winds really on any day would be of concern.”
A conventional red flag warning — which warns of severe wildfire behavior if ignition occurs — remains in effect for large portions of L.A., San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties, as well as some mountainous areas of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
The air is expected to be quite dry, with relative humidity as low as 8% in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
Red flag fire weather warnings are expected to last until 6 p.m. Wednesday but will extend through 3 p.m. Thursday in a few spots in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, including the Grapevine section of Interstate 5, the western San Gabriel Mountains and the Santa Susana Mountains.
Tuesday ended up being a calmer day for winds than forecasters had originally anticipated — good news for firefighters. Containment for last week’s devastating wildfires were either stable or ticked upward slightly.
Fire weather conditions are expected to improve starting Wednesday night through Saturday. But starting around Monday, there is a moderate risk for another round of red flag warnings.
The only way Southern California will see lasting relief from this punishing fire season is rain
The region is experiencing a painful dry spell that is among the driest starts to a winter on record, a major reason the fire risk is so high. Unfortunately, there are still no significant chances of rain through Jan. 25, forecasters say.
Downtown Los Angeles has received barely a drop of water for months — just 0.16 of an inch since Oct. 1, or just 3% of the seasonal average. Typically, at this point in the water year, downtown Los Angeles has received an average of 5.45 inches of rain. The annual average is 14.25 inches.
“As long as we go without seeing rain, it just doesn’t take much. The vegetation is just starving for moisture, and then when you get the wind on top of it, there’s definitely potential for fire behavior” after an ignition, said Alex Tardy, meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in San Diego.
Exacerbating the fire risk is that January is the peak season for Santa Ana winds — powerful winds that develop when high pressure over Nevada and Utah sends cold air screaming toward lower pressure areas along the California coast. The air dries out and compresses and heats up as it flows downslope from the high deserts — from the northeast — over California’s mountains and through canyons, drying out vegetation as the wind gusts through.
The magnitude of Santa Ana winds is typically strongest in January, said Tardy, citing research by the U.S. Forest Service and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
“Santa Anas are very common in December, January, and that’s usually when we see our strongest and biggest and most damaging ones. But we don’t have conditions this dry normally,” Tardy said.
For many areas of Southern California, “this is the driest start to any water year,” Tardy said, “and you can see extreme fire behavior with the ignitions.”
“During my career, I’ve never seen punishing Santa Ana events so overwhelm the normal winter rain season,” said retired climatologist Bill Patzert.
The Palisades fire has burned more than 23,700 acres and was 18% contained as of Wednesday morning up from 17% a day earlier. Containment is a reference to how much of the fire’s edge, or perimeter, has been surrounded to the extent firefighters believe they can stop the fire from expanding.
Views from a KABC-TV news helicopter before dawn Wednesday indicated no visible flames from the Palisades fire. However, firefighters continue to focus on watching hot spots to reduce the risk winds will pick up smoldering embers and carry them into new areas.
Many parts of Pacific Palisades, Malibu, unincorporated Sunset Mesa, Calabasas, Brentwood and Encino are under evacuation orders or warnings. Portions of Bel Air are under an evacuation warning, as is a northern sliver of Santa Monica.
There are 1,280 structures that have been destroyed in the Palisades fire and 204 that have been damaged, Scott said. However, officials are also still doing damage assessments, so those numbers are likely to increase. Authorities estimate that 5,300 structures have burned in that fire.
The Eaton fire, burning in the Altadena area, has charred just more than 14,100 acres and was 35% contained as of Wednesday morning, the same as on Monday morning.
Places under evacuation orders or warnings in the Eaton fire area include unincorporated Altadena and Kinneloa Mesa, Pasadena, Sierra Madre and La Cañada Flintridge
Damage assessments have confirmed 2,722 structures destroyed in the Eaton fire, though inspection teams are still combing through the fire footprint, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Officials estimate that 7,000 structures were damaged or destroyed; structures can include homes, businesses, smaller outbuildings, sheds and even vehicles.
The Palisades and Eaton fires are also among the deadliest in California’s history. Officials confirmed the number of deaths from both fires is 25 — 16 from Eaton and nine from Palisades —but warned the death toll is likely to keep rising.
There are also 37 missing person reports across both fires, officials said.
“This is the most devastating natural disaster to hit the Los Angeles area,” Scott said. “I’ve worked here for 20 years and I’ve never seen nor imagined devastation to be this extensive.”
Questions were being raised on a number of levels about planning leading up to last week’s fires.
As the Los Angeles Fire Department faced extraordinary warnings of life-threatening winds, top commanders decided not to assign for emergency deployment roughly 1,000 available firefighters and dozens of water-carrying engines in advance of the fire that destroyed much of the Pacific Palisades and continues to burn, interviews and internal LAFD records show.
The causes of both large fires are under investigation.
Investigators looking into the Eaton fire are focusing on an area around a Southern California Edison electrical transmission tower in Eaton Canyon.
As for the Palisades fire, sources with knowledge of the investigation have told The Times that the fire, which started in the Skull Rock area north of Sunset Boulevard, appears to have human origins. Officials are looking into whether a small fire possibly sparked by New Year’s Eve fireworks could somehow have rekindled Jan 7.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered an investigation into the causes behind water supply problems that left fire hydrants dry and hampered firefighting efforts during the devastating fires in Southern California.
The Times has reported that numerous fire hydrants in higher-elevation streets of the Palisades went dry, leaving crews struggling with low water pressure as they combated the flames. The Times has also found that a large reservoir in Pacific Palisades, Santa Ynez Reservoir, that is part of the Los Angeles water supply system was out of commission when the Palisades fire broke out.
Times staff writers Howard Blume, Noah Goldberg, Matt Hamilton, Salvador Hernandez, Ian James, Jenny Jarvie, Paul Pringle, Dakota Smith, Alene Tchekmedyian and Richard Winton contributed to this report.
