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Containment of the massive wildfires in Los Angeles was improving as the extreme winds that made it challenging to fight the blazes continued to recede Friday and gave the city some relief during the ongoing disaster.
Cooler air will continue to bring much-needed humidity to the region over the weekend, according to the National Weather Service’s latest forecast. But dry winds could return late Monday or early Tuesday.
The two largest wildfires, the Palisades fire and Eaton fire, have become more contained and have remained in their footprints over the last week. As of Friday morning, the Palisades fire was 27% contained and the Eaton fire was 55% contained. Both fires have been burning since 7 January.
The fires’ death toll rose by two people Thursday afternoon, bringing the total killed by the fires to 27. Ten were killed in the Palisades fire while 17 were killed in the Eaton fire, according to the LA county medical examiner’s office. Officials said that personnel are still working through evacuated neighborhoods and expect the death toll to rise.
Officials are utilizing “cadaver dogs and trying to locate remains and recover them, so that we can be accountable to the families who have missing relatives and do it in the most respectful way possible”, Jim McDonnell, chief of the LA police department, said at a news conference Wednesday. The LA county sheriff’s department told the LA Times that 31 people remain missing.
The structural damages, particularly in the Palisades and Altadena neighborhoods, are still being accounted for. So far, the Palisades fire has destroyed over 3,300 structures while the Eaton fire has destroyed nearly 6,800 structures. The totals will likely rise as officials continue tallying the homes that have been destroyed. Estimates put the total cost of damage around $250bn.
On Thursday, residents of certain evacuated zones started to return home for the first time since the fires started. Officials have not given a timeline to others on when they can return, given that the fires are still burning and officials are warning of hazardous debris and toxic waste in many areas.
At a news briefing Thursday, Mark Pestrella, director of the LA county public works department, said that some properties are “full of sediment, debris, silt and hazardous materials” that will take time for officials to clear out.
The sheriff’s department sent an alert out to officers guarding evacuated neighborhoods, warning them to wear masks and decontaminate their uniforms after lead, asbestos and other harmful particulates were found in the air near the Eaton fire, according to the LA Times.
Officials are also warning residents who can return to their homes to watch for signs of instability at the base of their properties. The fires appeared to have destabilized the land, particularly in the Pacific Palisades neighborhoods, which could lead to dangerous landslides. A home along the beach in the Palisades that was spared from the fires split in half due to a mudslide this week.
“No matter where you live in LA county, if you have slopes behind your homes or you’re located on top of a slope, these slopes have become fragile,” Pestrella said. “There are mud and debris flow hazards that are existing even when it’s not raining, so we want people to be very careful.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people were ordered to evacuate and part of Highway 1 in northern California was closed early Friday after a major fire erupted at one of the world’s largest battery storage plants.
The fire started Thursday afternoon and sent up towering flames and black smoke, and about 1,500 people were instructed to leave Moss Landing and the Elkhorn Slough area, The Mercury News reported.
The blaze was still burning early Friday with some containment and it had not gone beyond the facility, according to Monterey county spokesperson Nicholas Pasculli.
The Moss Landing Power Plant, located about 77 miles (about 124km) south of San Francisco, is owned by Texas-based company Vistra Energy and contains tens of thousands of lithium batteries. The batteries are important for storing electricity from such renewable energy sources as solar energy, but if they go up in flames the blazes can be extremely difficult to put out.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
