Stream Southern California's News Leader and Original Shows 24/7
LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- At least 27 people are believed to be dead and more than a dozen others remain unaccounted for as multiple wildfires, fueled by severe drought conditions and strong Santa Ana winds, continue burning in Southern California.
The Palisades Fire, burning in the Pacific Palisades, and the Eaton Fire, burning in Altadena, have forced thousands to evacuate and destroyed more than 12,000 structures.
A wrongful death lawsuit has been filed against Southern California Edison over the Eaton Fire.
The suit was announced Wednesday on behalf of Evelyn McClendon's family. The Altadena woman is one of at least 16 people who lost their lives in the fire that erupted Jan. 7.
The suit alleges the utility failed to turn off its electrical equipment despite warnings about dangerous fire weather conditions.
Jan 16, 2025, 6:16 PM GMT
Pacific Palisades home spared by fire split apart by landside
A home that was spared by the Palisades Fire has now been damaged by a landslide in the burn area.
Cal Fire authorities said the agency's teams are in the fire zones analyzing the burn areas to determine places of concern.
A landslide damaged a home in the Palisades Fire burn area.
A landslide damaged a home in the Palisades Fire burn area.
L.A. County Public Works Director Mark Pestrella addressed landslide concerns in the burn areas during a Thursday morning press conference.
"Both areas suffered watershed damage ... to such a significance that we expect massive debris-laden flows when it rains," Pestrella said.
He explained that the current flood control system is designed to handle debris flows, but "in an event that we have major rain, we do expect that all areas will be impacted by debris flows that will be hazardous to human health."
"In order to address this, we are developing plans for both areas to capture and hold this debris back as much as we can during a rain event," Pestrella said.
The possibility of rain is in the forecast at the end of January, Pestrella added.
Fierce winds and devastating wildfires have shifted land in the burn areas of the Eaton and Palisades fires, raising the risk of mudslides and debris flows, the director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works said.
1:27 AM GMT
Most of SoCal, including burn areas, now in severe drought
Most of Southern California -- including the areas ravaged by fires -- in severe drought, according to the latest map from the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Here is the latest map:
Most of Southern California -- including the areas ravaged by fires -- in severe drought, according to the latest map from the U.S. Drought Monitor.
When you compare the current conditions compared to January 2024, you can see that yellow, tan, orange and even some red, is back in Southern California.
Most of SoCal -- including the areas ravaged by fires -- is in severe drought, according to the latest map from the U.S. Drought Monitor.
"We are no strangers to drought in Southern California and we find ourselves once again in that situation," said Edith de Guzman, a cooperative extension specialist at UCLA. "We haven't had any measurable precipitation since about April of last year. That is a real contrast from what we saw in the winters of 2023 and 24, when we had extraordinarily wet conditions."
Most of L.A. County is covered in orange, which is considered severe drought.
With the two major fires in the county, recent UCLA analysis found climate change amplified the dryness, but the fires would have still been extreme without the moisture deficit.
"A big portion of these destructive fires is due to natural variability. So without climate change, you'd still have a destructive fire, but climate change basically adds more fuel due to increased warming," said Chad Thackeray, a UCLA climate researcher.
A significant storm seems like a distant memory. In the years from 2022 to 2024, downtown L.A. received more than 50 inches of rain combined. That's a number the city hasn't seen since the late 1800s.
"If we just remember like until 11 months ago, UCLA recorded 12 inches of rain in a 24-hour period. So that's just off the charts for us. There are entire years on record when UCLA does not record that much rain in an entire 12-month period," said de Guzman.
You can see just three months ago, we were not considered to be in a drought. But as winter continues, we're off to one of the driest starts on record.
