Editor's Note: A live blog of the California wildfires for Thursday, Jan. 9 can be found here. Our latest story continues below.
At least four major fires were burning in Southern California Thursday morning, with as many as 100,000 residents under evacuation orders as fast-moving flames continue to burn through homes and businesses.
The latest fire -- the Sunset Fire, in the densely populated area of Hollywood Hills -- broke out Wednesday night, threatening one of Los Angeles' most iconic spots as firefighters battled to get three other major blazes under control.
The Sunset Fire started as officials were holding a news conference Wednesday evening to update residents on efforts to fight massive fires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena and to warn that fire danger remained high. Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley made a hasty exit after announcing the new fire and soon after an evacuation order was issued.
The Hollywood Walk of Fame was bustling and the streets around the TCL Chinese Theatre and Madame Tussauds were packed with stop-and-go traffic as sirens blared and low-flying helicopters flew overhead to dump water on the flames, which were only about a mile away. People toting suitcases left hotels while some onlookers walked toward the flames, recording the fire on their phones.
Within a few hours, firefighters had made major progress. Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. Erik Scott said they were able to keep the fire in check because “we hit it hard and fast and mother nature was a little nicer to us today than she was yesterday.”
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But the same can't be said for the other major blazes burning, two of which remained zero percent contained as of Thursday morning.
Nearly 2,000 homes, businesses and other structures have been destroyed in those blazes — called the Palisades and Eaton fires, at 17,000 acres, and 10,600 acres, respectively — and the number is expected to rise.
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Mark Hamill, Mandy Moore among celebrities affected by Los Angeles wildfires
More than half a dozen schools in the area were either damaged or destroyed, including Palisades Charter High School, which has been featured in many Hollywood productions, including the 1976 horror movie “Carrie” and the TV series “Teen Wolf,” officials said. UCLA has canceled classes for the week.
What is causing the fires in LA?
Southern California is experiencing it’s most devastating winter fires in more than four decades. Fires don’t usually blaze at this time of year, but specific ingredients have come together to defy the calendar in a fast and deadly manner.
Start with supersized Santa Ana winds whipping flames and embers at 100 mph — much faster than normal — and cross that with the return of extreme drought. Add on weather whiplash that grew tons of plants in downpours then record high temperatures that dried them out to make easy-to-burn fuel. Then there’s a plunging and unusual jet stream, and lots of power lines flapping in those powerful gusts.
Experts say that’s what is turning wildfires into a deadly urban conflagration.
“Tiny, mighty and fast” fires have blazed through America’s west in the last couple of decades as the world warms, said University of Colorado fire scientist Jennifer Balch. She published a study in the journal Science last October that looked at 60,000 fires since 2001 and found that the fastest-growing ones have more than doubled in frequency since 2001 and caused far more destruction that slower, larger blazes.
“Fires have gotten faster,” Balch said Wednesday. “The big culprit we’re suspecting is a warming climate that’s making it easier to burn fuels when conditions are just right.”
Summer fires are bigger usually, but they don’t burn nearly as fast. Winter fires “are much more destructive because they happen much more quickly” said U.S. Geological Survey fire scientist Jon Keeley.
AccuWeather estimated damage from the latest fires could reach $57 billion, with the private firm’s chief meteorologist, Jonathan Porter, saying “it may become the worst wildfire in modern California history based on the number of structures burned and economic loss.”
Which fire is the biggest?
Some reporters have compared the 80+ mph gusts to Tropical Storm force winds.
"The Palisades fire is by far the biggest," NBC 5 Storm Team Meteorologist Kevin Jeanes said. "It just ignited 48 hours ago and is close to 18,000 acres, because the winds were so intense yesterday it just spread that quickly."
The Palisades Fire already is the most destructive in Los Angeles history, with at least 1,000 structures burned.
Jeanes noted the Eaton fire, at 10,600 acres, was the second largest. The Sunset fire remained at 60 acres Thursday morning, Jeanes said, while the Hurst, at 855 acres, was 10 percent contained.
"The winds will get a little lighter today, but we're still going to deal with gusts between 40 and 60 mph," Jeanes said. "Lighter -- if you can believe that -- than yesterday."
Jeanes noted the wind was expected to relax and shift directions over the weekend.
Conditions are ideal for fires
“It’s really just the perfect alignment of everything in the atmosphere to give you this pattern and strong wind,” said Tim Brown, director of the Western Regional Climate Center.
Wind speed and the speed of spreading flames are clearly linked.
“The impact increases exponentially as wind speed increases,” said fire scientist Mike Flannigan of Thompson Rivers University in Canada. If firefighters can get to the flames within 10 minutes or so, it’s spread can be contained, but “15 minutes, it’s too late and it’s gone. The horse has left the barn.”
There’s no sure link between Santa Ana winds — gusts from the east that come down the mountains, gain speed and hit the coast — to human-caused climate change, said Daniel Swain, climate scientist for the California Institute for Water Resources.
But a condition that led to those winds is a big plunge in the temperature of the jet stream — the river of air that moves weather systems across the globe — which helped bring cold air to the eastern two-thirds of the nation, said University of California Merced climate and fire scientist John Abatzoglou. Other scientists have preliminarily linked those jet stream plunges to climate change.
Why did the Palisades fire spread so quickly? NBC's climate reporter explains
Santa Ana winds are happening later and later in the year, moving more from the drier fall to the wetter winter, Keeley said. Normally, that would reduce fire threats, but this isn’t a normal time.
After two soaking winters, when atmospheric rivers dumped huge amounts of water on the region causing lots of plants to grow, a fast onset of drought dried them out, providing perfect tinder, according to Swain and Abatzoglou.
Swain says this weather whiplash is happening more often.
There is a clear link between climate change and the more frequent dry falls and winters that provide fuel for fires, Swain said.
These devastating fires couldn’t happen without the dry and hot conditions, nor would they be blazing without the extreme wind speed, Abatzoglou and others said.
But the human factor in this can’t be ignored, said Keeley.
“I think that we need to look at it from the perspective of global changes. And climate is just one global change. And certainly one of the other important global changes is population growth. And California has been growing at a phenomenal rate in the last 20 years,” Keeley said. “You add more people and that means you add more power lines and more potential for failure to occur.”
