Palisades fire: Worst is ‘yet to come’ as winds gain speed, ground aircraft

Fearsome winds forced crews to ground firefighting aircraft in the battle against the Palisades fire on Tuesday night, making it even more challenging for firefighters to get a handle on the fast-growing blaze.

The use of aircraft was halted shortly before 8 p.m., and Los Angeles fire officials said they would continually reassess weather conditions to determine when they might be used again, said Margaret Stewart with the Los Angeles Fire Department.

The fire remained 0% contained at 11 p.m. Tuesday as “extreme fire behavior” continued to challenge firefighters, according to the L.A. County Fire Department. Wind gusts up to 60 mph were expected to continue through Thursday.

The fire ignited at Piedra Morada Drive at 10:30 a.m. and had scorched 2,921 acres by early evening, forcing more than 30,000 residents to flee their homes. The extreme wind event blasting Southern California was forecast to peak between 10 p.m. Tuesday and 5 a.m. Wednesday, posing a serious challenge to overnight efforts to combat the growing blaze.

“This event is not only not over, but it is just getting started and will get significantly worse before it gets better,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said in a briefing just after 4 p.m. Tuesday.

The strongest and most widespread winds are “yet to come,” Swain said, as is the lowest humidity.

L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone had warned around 4 p.m. Tuesday that increasing winds could make an air attack unfeasible.

Although it might be frustrating for residents to see firefighting aircraft grounded, extreme winds can make those efforts less effective, as water or retardant that is dropped is immediately dispersed by the wind, said Gov. Gavin Newsom, who visited the site of the Palisades fire Tuesday.

“We can be up there all day, making people feel good,” he said, “but we’re not doing any good.”

The combination of extreme winds and critically low humidity created a dangerous recipe for new fires to break out overnight.

“We are anticipating — hopefully we’re wrong — but we’re anticipating other fires happening,” Newsom said at 4 p.m, adding that the state had strategically positioned resources in areas of high fire risk.

By around 6:30 p.m., that prediction had come true as the Eaton fire broke out in the hills above Altadena near Eaton Canyon. It had burned about 1,000 acres by late Tuesday night, prompting evacuations in the area west of the Eaton Canyon Golf Course, according to the U.S. Forest Service and the California Department of Foresty and Fire Protection. The strong winds led officials to suspend air coverage of the Eaton fire for the evening, Derderian said at 8:45 p.m.

Around 10:10 p.m., a brush fire, dubbed the Hurst fire, ignited in Sylmar and quickly spread to 100 acres, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

Meanwhile, the Palisades fire continued to charge forward, threatening thousands of homes and scores of businesses.

On Tuesday afternoon, crews were racing to save the Getty Villa and Palisades Charter High School from flames lapping their grounds. The Reel Inn, a seafood restaurant that has been a Malibu institution for more than three decades, appears to have burned in the fire.

A 25-year-old firefighter battling the Palisades fire suffered a serious head injury around 8:30 p.m. and was transported to a hospital for treatment, said LAFD spokesperson Erik Scott. In addition, several burn victims were treated by first responders at Duke’s restaurant in Malibu, which had been closed for the day, he said.

The National Weather Service predicts that the ongoing windstorm will be the most destructive to have hit the Los Angeles region since 2011.

The weather service issued a “particularly dangerous situation” warning for extreme fire danger in wide swaths of Los Angeles and eastern Ventura counties, prior to the ignition of the Palisades fire. That warning is set to expire Thursday.

Although the worst of the winds are expected Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, fire danger will remain high throughout the week.

“The vegetation will become progressively drier the longer the wind event goes on,” said Swain. “So some of the strongest winds will be at the beginning of the event, but some of the driest vegetation will actually come at the end, and so the reality is that there’s going to be a very long period of high fire risk.”

Recent rainfall patterns are exacerbating the fire danger, said Alex Hall, director of the UCLA Center for Climate Science.

“Southern California has experienced a particularly hot summer, followed by almost no precipitation during what is normally our wet season,” he explained. “And all of this comes on the heels of two very rainy years, which means there is plenty of fuel for potential wildfires.”

Climate change has a part to play in this particularly dangerous event, Swain said.

There’s not much evidence that climate change has increased the likelihood of extreme wind events. There is evidence, however, that it is increasing the overlap between these wind events and periods of extremely dry vegetation conditions during what would typically be the wet season, he said.

Newsom echoed the sentiment that fire danger is no longer contained to a fire season.

“We were here not too long ago [for] the Franklin fire and, a few weeks prior to that, the Mountain fire,” he said. “November, December, now January — there’s no fire season. It’s fire year. It’s year-round.”