L.A. live fire updates: Hughes fire rages on as red flag warning continues into Thursday

When the flames destroyed Ria Cousineau’s Altadena house and damaged the home of her partner, Emily Allen, a horrific situation gave way to what felt like an impossible task.

In an effort to find a semi-permanent home while they rebuild, Cousineau estimated the couple toured about 10 houses over four or five days, with one house seeing at least 30 families stroll through in just 10 minutes. Under pressure, they offered to pay $250 more than the asking price on a Pasadena rental.

The Laguna fire is burning near Camarillo and the campus of Cal State Channel Islands.

Firefighters and water-dropping helicopters are on scene near Laguna Road and Hueneme Road. Several acres have burned.

The state unveiled its revamped fire relief website on Thursday, offering a one-stop shop to help Los Angeles County firestorm survivors access vital services.

Fire victims can use the website to find information on how to apply for Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster relief, file insurance claims, replace documents and return to their homes safely. It also offers assistance with accessing food, expense reimbursements and shelter, and provides real-time updates via fire maps, air quality information and road closure maps as well.

Rep. Judy Chu has called for an independent investigation into why it took so long to evacuate parts of Altadena during the Jan. 7 Eaton Fire.

A Times investigation reported earlier this week that residents of Altadena living west of Lake Avenue did not get evacuation warnings until many hours after the fire started. All of the 17 confirmed deaths from the fire occurred in that part of Altadena.

Chu said in a statement she was “dismayed and deeply concerned that evacuation warnings and orders were significantly delayed.”

“We owe it to the victims, survivors, and their families to ensure that these evacuation notification delays and failures are not repeated. I urge Los Angeles County emergency officials to conduct an immediate, independent investigation into the handling of these emergency notifications to examine the timeline of alerts, the coordination between agencies, and changes needed to be made to strengthen our systems to save lives. Transparency and accountability are critical so that every community is treated equitably in future emergencies,” she added.

Fifteen days after fire ripped through Pacific Palisades, destroying his house on Iliff Street and reducing a good part of his school to rubble, Jonathan Fuhrman pulled up to the kitchen table of his temporary Brentwood home, logged into his laptop and launched Zoom.

“Here we go again,” said the Palisades Charter High School senior, who spent most of middle school in virtual classes during the COVID-19 pandemic and started out high school wearing a mask and taking weekly coronavirus tests. “I wonder if people will be on camera.”

The Sepulveda fire was burning east of the 405 Freeway in the Sepulveda Pass early Thursday morning.

Evacuation warning

The wildfires that have torn through Pacific Palisades and other parts of Los Angeles this month have damaged or destroyed about $350 million in public infrastructure, including streetlights, recreation centers and a library that burned down, according to a city report.

The initial cost estimate, which examined damage from the first four days of the fires, was presented Wednesday to the City Council as part of a larger discussion on the impact of the emergency on the city budget.

A real estate agent in La Cañada Flintridge is facing criminal charges for allegedly raising the price of a rental property by 38% after the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Wednesday.

“May this announcement serve as a stern warning to those who would seek to further victimize those who have lost everything,” Bonta said in a release. “DOJ is aggressively and relentlessly pursuing those who are trying to make a quick buck off someone else’s pain.”

As the sun began to set over Castaic Lake on Wednesday, the hills to the north and east were engulfed in flames, casting an eerie orange glow across the valley below.

The Hughes fire ignited earlier in the day north of Castaic and by evening had grown to more than 9,000 acres, forcing the evacuation of about 31,000 people.

A fire ignited late Wednesday in Bel-Air on the eastern side of the 405 Freeway in the Sepulveda Pass and burned into the early morning hours Thursday.

The fire, across the freeway and a mile north from the Getty Center, moved uphill amid wind gusts in the area that at one point reached 25 mph, according to Todd Hall, meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Contributing to the fire conditions was extremely dry air; relative humidity was 3% to 8%.

A stretch of Interstate 5 in northern Los Angeles County that was closed because of the nearby Hughes fire reopened Wednesday evening, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Earlier Wednesday afternoon, officials closed the freeway in both directions through the Grapevine, with northbound lanes shut down at the interchange with Highway 126 and southbound traffic closed at Grapevine Road on the southern edge of Kern County.

“For a variety of reasons, we will reopen the freeway so that people can go back and forth again,” L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna said during a news conference.

However, Luna stressed that those who do not need to travel should still avoid the area.

“If you do not live in this area, if you’re following the smoke, if you want to go see what the firefighters are doing, turn on the television set,” he said. “Do not drive into these areas. You are impacting the ingress and the egress of emergency vehicles. We don’t need more traffic. We want less traffic.”

Moments after the Hughes fire exploded, L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Jonathan Hatami said he raced out of the Michael Antonovich Antelope Valley Courthouse in Lancaster and drove back to Santa Clarita, where his children and hundreds of others were being evacuated from West Creek Academy as the sky overhead darkened with smoke.

“You had some parents crying. You had younger kids ... they were crying. You could see the smoke from the school, everybody is kind of on edge,” said Hatami, whose children are 8 and 10.