Los Angeles: The inferno sweeping Los Angeles, the entertainment capital of the US, has leapt onto Hollywood Hills endangering fabled landmarks in the area on Thursday.
Nearly 150,000 people were under evacuation orders on Wednesday night as the fires burnt down 7,000 hectares, killed at least five people and destroyed over 1,000 buildings, including houses of celebrities, places of worship and schools.
Hurricane-force winds on Tuesday sent the fires that started earlier this week on outer fringes of Los Angeles leaping across suburbs and neighbourhoods, finally reaching the Hollywood Hills by the time the winds slowed.
Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said, “I’ve never seen anything like this — fires driven by the type of winds that we saw, up to 100 miles per hour” (160 kmph).
On Wednesday, the winds slowed helping the firefighters and allowing helicopters to douse the fires.
The area where Vice President Kamala Harris has her personal house was put under evacuation orders on Tuesday night because of impending danger, but no one was there, her spokesperson said.
Los Angeles is the hometown to US Ambassador to India, Eric Garcetti, who was its mayor.
The concentration of entertainment royalty multiplied several times the impact of the fires. Singer Mandy Moore and celebrity socialite Paris Hilton lost their homes.
Director Steven Spielberg and actors Tom Hanks and Ben Affleck were among those with houses in the evacuation zones.
The studios were not directly damaged by the fires, but production came to a standstill.
A two-day extension was given for Oscar nominations because of the fire.
Southern California has had virtually no rain since May drying out the shrubbery turning them into tinder for the fires.
In scenes that could have come out of a Hollywood apocalyptic film, against a backdrop of orange fires lighting up hillsides, an exodus of people fleeing their homes by vehicles and even by foot clogged the streets, while helicopters flew overhead dropping water on the flames and firefighters and emergency workers raced, but sometimes barely managed to crawl through the chaotic traffic and the damaged roads.
Firefighters and National Guard across the region converged to join the fight.
After the fires had been doused in some neighbourhoods, people came back to the charred skeletons of homes.
Meanwhile, in a common feature of US tragedies, looters moved to the evacuated zones and police battled them.
The fire on the Hollywood Hill was a kilometre away Wednesday night from the Hollywood Hall of Fame and the Hollywood Bowl amphitheatre.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden visited the area, stopping at a fire station in Santa Monica.
He said of the recovery, “It’s going to be a hell of a long way, it’s going to take time, but the federal government is here to stay as long as you need it and everything you need”.
The fires were personal for him: He said that his son who moved to the region was ordered to evacuate, but his granddaughter gave birth to a son on Wednesday.
Biden cancelled a trip to Italy because of the fires.
At some places, fire hydrants ran dry, which local officials said was because of the unprecedented demand.
President-elect Donald Trump, though, blamed California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom for the water shortage.
In a Truth Social post he said that Newsom had refused to approve a “water restoration declaration” because he wanted to protect an endangered species of fish called smelt, rather than people, preventing South California getting enough water.
While not denying that the water projects had been stopped, Newsom’s spokesperson said that such a declaration did not exist.
In a vivid illustration of how the fires with massive evacuation orders affect people, CBS TV reporters covering the fire rushed to evacuate their families or check in on them between their on-air reports, while the weather reporter brought her family to the studio after they had been ordered to evacuate their homes.
The people ordered to evacuate were sheltering in public buildings away from the fire zones.
(IANS)
