Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Fire­fight­ers are hop­ing for a break Fri­day from the fierce winds that have fu­elled mas­sive blazes in the Los An­ge­les area, killing 10 peo­ple, oblit­er­at­ing whole neigh­bour­hoods and set­ting the na­tion’s sec­ond-largest city on edge.

On Thurs­day af­ter­noon, the Ken­neth Fire start­ed in the San Fer­nan­do Val­ley. It moved in­to neigh­bour­ing Ven­tu­ra Coun­ty, but a large and ag­gres­sive re­sponse by fire­fight­ers stopped the flames from spread­ing.

As of Fri­day morn­ing, the Pal­isades Fire near the coast was 6% con­tained. The Eaton Fire north of Pasade­na was 0% con­tained. The Hurst Fire just south of San­ta Clari­ta was 37% con­tained. The Ken­neth Fire in the San Fer­nan­do Val­ley was 35% con­tained.

Mean­while, wind con­di­tions have been de­scribed as fe­ro­cious.  Blaze-fan­ning winds have calmed some­what to­day, giv­ing fire­fight­ers a chance to cor­ral the flames.

At least 180,000 res­i­dents are un­der evac­u­a­tion or­ders, per of­fi­cials. Of­fi­cials with Los An­ge­les Coun­ty say an evac­u­a­tion or­der alert for res­i­dents near the Ken­neth Fire in the West Hills was mis­tak­en­ly sent coun­ty­wide on Thurs­day af­ter­noon. 

Of­fi­cials apol­o­gized for the er­ror at a press con­fer­ence this morn­ing.

“There is an ex­treme amount of frus­tra­tion, anger, fear with re­gards to the er­ro­neous mes­sages that have been sent out through the wire­less emer­gency Alert Sys­tem across L.A Coun­ty. I can’t ex­press enough how sor­ry I am for this ex­pe­ri­ence,” L.A. Coun­ty Of­fice of Emer­gency Man­age­ment Di­rec­tor Kevin Mc­Gowan said on Fri­day.

Mc­Gowan said the alerts are not be­ing sent by a per­son and his of­fice is try­ing to find the root cause.

A fire­fight­ing plane had to be ground­ed Thurs­day af­ter it was struck by a drone flown by a civil­ian, the Los An­ge­les Coun­ty Fire De­part­ment said. No­body was in­jured.

It’s a fed­er­al crime to fly a drone dur­ing fire­fight­ing.

Los An­ge­les Coun­ty Fire Chief An­tho­ny Per­rone said the su­per scoop­er that was dam­aged by a drone should be back in the air by Mon­day.

“Fly­ing a drone in the fire traf­fic area is not on­ly dan­ger­ous but it’s il­le­gal,” he said, adding that those who fly them over the wild­fire area will be pros­e­cut­ed.

Here are more up­dates…

May­or Bass: ‘To all An­ge­lenos, we’re fight­ing hard for each of you’

By OL­GA R. RO­DRIGUEZ

At a news con­fer­ence on Fri­day morn­ing to pro­vide up­dates on the Los An­ge­les wild­fires, May­or Karen Bass said of­fi­cials are work­ing around the clock and that fire­fight­ers have ex­tin­guished fires in Pa­coima, Hol­ly­wood, Stu­dio City and oth­er places.

“To all An­ge­lenos, we’re fight­ing hard for each of you,” she said. “I don’t be­lieve there is any­thing An­ge­lenos can’t do if we stand to­geth­er,” she added.

Na­tion­al Guard troops on the ground in Al­tade­na

By BRI­AN MEL­LEY

Na­tion­al Guard troops were pa­trolling the streets of Al­tade­na be­fore dawn on Fri­day af­ter be­ing called in to help pro­tect prop­er­ty in the fire evac­u­a­tion zone.

Troops in cam­ou­flage were post­ed at in­ter­sec­tions in the city hard-hit by the Eaton Fire near Jeeps, Humvees and oth­er mil­i­tary ve­hi­cles.

At least 20 ar­rests have been made for loot­ing and oth­er thefts in ar­eas where the fire raged.

Los An­ge­les Coun­ty of­fi­cials say they plan to put an overnight cur­few in place that would make it eas­i­er to make ar­rests.

Aus­tralia ‘stands ready to pro­vide sup­port’ to help bat­tle Los An­ge­les blazes

By ROD MCGUIRK

“We haven’t had any re­quests for fur­ther sup­port. But Aus­tralia al­ways stands ready to pro­vide sup­port to our friends in times of need,” Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Al­banese told Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Corp. in the west coast city of Perth on Fri­day.

“One of the is­sues that we have, of course, is we do need to be cog­nizant of the fact that this is our fire sea­son as well,” he added.

The Cal­i­for­nia fires come at the peak of Aus­tralia’s fire sea­son.

What ig­nit­ed the dead­ly Cal­i­for­nia wild­fires? 

By JA­SON DEAREN

In­ves­ti­ga­tors are con­sid­er­ing an ar­ray of pos­si­ble ig­ni­tion sources for the huge fires that have killed at least 10 peo­ple and de­stroyed thou­sands of homes and busi­ness­es in the Los An­ge­les area.

In hilly, up­scale Pa­cif­ic Pal­isades, home to Hol­ly­wood stars like Jamie Lee Cur­tis and Bil­ly Crys­tal who lost hous­es in the fire, of­fi­cials have placed the ori­gin of the wind-whipped blaze be­hind a home on Piedra Mora­da Dri­ve, which sits above a dense­ly wood­ed ar­royo.

While light­ning is the most com­mon source of fires in the U.S., ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Fire Pro­tec­tion As­so­ci­a­tion, in­ves­ti­ga­tors were able to rule that out quick­ly. There were no re­ports of light­ning in the Pal­isades area or the ter­rain around the Eaton fire, which start­ed in east Los An­ge­les Coun­ty and has al­so de­stroyed hun­dreds of homes.

The next two most com­mon caus­es: fires in­ten­tion­al­ly set, and those sparked by util­i­ty lines.

John Lenti­ni, own­er of Sci­en­tif­ic Fire Analy­sis in Flori­da, who has in­ves­ti­gat­ed large fires in Cal­i­for­nia in­clud­ing the Oak­land Hills fire in 1991, said the size and scope of the blaze doesn’t change the ap­proach to find­ing out what caused it.

“This was once a small fire,” Lenti­ni said. “Peo­ple will fo­cus on where the fire start­ed, de­ter­mine the ori­gin and look around the ori­gin and de­ter­mine the cause.”

So far there has been no of­fi­cial in­di­ca­tion of ar­son in ei­ther blaze, and util­i­ty lines have not yet been iden­ti­fied as a cause ei­ther.

Util­i­ties are re­quired to re­port to the Cal­i­for­nia Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion when they know of “elec­tric in­ci­dents po­ten­tial­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with a wild­fire,” Ter­rie Pros­per, the com­mis­sion’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions di­rec­tor, said via email. CPUC staff then in­ves­ti­gate to see if there were vi­o­la­tions of state law.

The 2017 Thomas Fire, one of the largest fires in state his­to­ry, was sparked by South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Edi­son pow­er lines that came in­to con­tact dur­ing high wind, in­ves­ti­ga­tors de­ter­mined. The blaze killed two peo­ple and charred more than 440 square miles (1,140 square kilo­me­ters), ac­cord­ing to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion head­ed by the Ven­tu­ra Coun­ty Fire De­part­ment.

So far no such re­ports for the cur­rent fires have been post­ed to the CPUC web­site that tracks such fil­ings.

While light­ning, ar­son and util­i­ty lines are the most com­mon caus­es, de­bris burn­ing and fire­works are al­so com­mon caus­es.

But fires are in­cit­ed by myr­i­ad sources, in­clud­ing ac­ci­dents.

In 2021, a cou­ple’s gen­der re­veal stunt start­ed a large fire that torched close to 36 square miles (about 90 square kilo­me­tres) of ter­rain, de­stroyed five homes and 15 oth­er build­ings and claimed the life of a fire­fight­er, Char­lie Mor­ton.