A week after L.A. firestorms began, the threat continues as the unprecedented loss sink in

Aerial view of neighborhoods destroyed by the Palisades fire

, Rong-Gong Lin II, Nathan Solis and Grace Toohey

Jan. 14, 2025 Updated 2:57 PM PT

A week after flames leveled huge swaths of Pacific Palisades and Altadena, Southern California remained under a severe fire threat as residents still struggled to comprehend the scale of the loss.

An army of firefighters spent Tuesday putting out small fires before they got out of control and continued building containment lines on the Palisades and Eaton fires in hopes to prevent them from spreading more. The firestorm is expected to be the most costly in U.S. history, consuming what officials estimate could be more than 12,000 structures, including many homes.

“This is the most devastating natural disaster to hit the Los Angeles area,” said L.A. Fire Department Capt. Erik Scott. “I’ve worked here for 20 years and I’ve never seen nor imagined devastation to be this extensive.”

The reality of the losses came into greater focus as residents lined up on Tuesday at two Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster recovery centers opened to assist people whose homes and belongings were destroyed in the fires.

Sonja Jackson waited outside the center with her 3-year-old granddaughter, Amirah, and her 9-year-old son, Aaden, looking for some guidance after her family’s initial application for assistance was denied.

The Eaton fire destroyed Jackson’s home in Altadena, her mother’s home and her daughter’s home in a matter of hours. The family cat, Marshmallow, is still missing.

“We all left with the clothes on our back,” Jackson, 45, said. “We thought we’d be able to come back in the morning. We didn’t think the fires were gonna do what they did.”

Jackson, a nurse, now finds herself along with as many as nine other family members crammed into her aunt’s home. She’s hoping to secure some type of temporary housing while she and her family get back on their feet, but her insurance provider, Allstate, will only cover a two-night stay at a hotel. Her plan will also only cover $20,000 for personal items lost in the fire, Jackson said.

“Which does nothing,” Jackson said. “I lost appliances, clothes—mine [and] my granddaughter’s—so, what do you do with that money? It will get us an inch, but what happens after that inch?”

While gusty winds were still present across the region for much of the day, the extreme winds that were initially forecast for Tuesday didn’t materialize as expected. Instead, those winds are anticipated to hit early Wednesday. A “particularly dangerous situation” fire weather warning will go in effect at 3 a.m. Wednesday and last until 3 p.m., according to the National Weather Service.

In the last several days, firefighters have rushed to stop the Palisades and Eaton fires from growing and to boost containment of the blazes ahead of the winds. The Palisades fire has burned more than 23,700 acres and was 17% contained as of Tuesday. The Eaton fire, burning in the Altadena area, has charred just over 14,100 acres and was 35% contained, according to the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said crews had made extensive preparations for the latest extreme weather event reinforcing fire control lines around the Eaton and Palisades fires, clearing dry brush from surviving structures, and staging resources in areas where new fires could ignite. The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services has also pre-positioned additional engines, fire crews, helicopters, bulldozers and water tenders across Southern California.

Authorities hope to be able to keep firefighting aircraft up during the winds, but it’s unclear how much the conditions will allow.

Battalion Chief Brett Willis said air support in Los Angeles County remained ready and able to fly, if needed. One helicopter was out Tuesday morning doing reconnaissance.

However, winds had already clocked in at higher and dangerous speeds in Camarillo, he said, where officials decided to move some helicopters and fixed-wing planes that had been stationed there, relocating them south and east so they could be able to fly if needed.

In the Palisades and Altadena areas, firefighters have been focusing on hot spots and reinforcing containment lines.

“The fuel moistures are near critical, so they’re extremely dry and receptive to fire,” Scott said of the Palisades fire area. “We’re worried about the winds stirring up this 23,000-acre smoldering debris pile and casting embers on unburned brush.”

Although there is no final tally yet of structures burned, the fires are already among the most destructive the state has experienced.

Damage assessments have confirmed 2,722 structures destroyed in the Eaton fire, though inspection teams are still combing through the fire footprint, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Officials estimate that 7,000 structures were damaged or destroyed, though structures can include homes, businesses, smaller outbuildings and sheds and even vehicles.

Map shows high risk fire areas forecast for Monday through Wednesday for southwest counties in California.

There are 1,280 structures that have been destroyed in the Palisades fire and another 204 that have been damaged, Scott said. However, officials are also still doing damage assessments, so those numbers are likely to increase. Authorities estimate that 5,300 structures have burned in the fire.

The Palisades and Eaton fires are also among the deadliest in California’s modern history. Officials confirmed the number of deaths from both fires is 24, but warn the death toll is likely to keep rising.

There are also still 37 missing persons reports across both fires, officials said. Two individuals who have been reported missing “have most likely been found deceased” but authorities have not positively identified them, L.A. Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell said.

Winds hitting the region over the next day will be more of a conventional Santa Ana event, forecasters say, with gusts coming out of the east and spreading fires to the west. That means the winds will have more of a focus on Ventura County compared with those last week, which came generally out of the north and hit Los Angeles County hard.

Areas covered by the “particularly dangerous situation” include Camarillo, Fillmore, Northridge, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks. A conventional red flag warning — for a combination of strong winds, dry air and vegetation, and expected severe wildfire behavior if ignition occurs — remains in effect across the region, including large portions of L.A., San Diego, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties, as well as some mountainous areas of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

Southern California Edison implemented a public safety power shutoff for more than 58,000 customers across its service area on Tuesday as the winds started to increase. Such shutoffs are aimed at mitigating threats, often in areas where the utility’s equipment could be at high risk of sparking a wildfire.

Of those without power, more than 18,000 customers live in Los Angeles County and roughly 16,700 are in Ventura County. Another 122,000 customers in Los Angeles County and 88,000 customers in Ventura County could have their power shut off at some point during the wind event, the utility said Tuesday afternoon.

About 17,000 Los Angeles Department of Water and Power customers in Pacific Palisades, Encino and Brentwood remained without power on Tuesday, according to the utility.

Los Angeles County’s wireless emergency alerts are still seeing some lingering issues after millions in L.A. County incorrectly received the panic-inducing messages on their cellphones last week.

Though the county Office of Emergency Management says it is now prepared to send new alerts after overhauling its system, some incorrect alerts continued to show up on phones Monday, days after the evacuation warning was warranted and far from the intended geographic area.

“We believe these to be ‘echo alerts.’ Echo alerts were found to be the result of messages being relayed through cellphone towers that were shut down during fire conditions and power outages and are now coming back online,” the county’s Office of Emergency Management said in a statement late Monday.

It wasn’t immediately clear how widespread the issue was, but officials said they are prepared to send out new alerts during the ongoing wind event this week, if warranted.

As winds began to pick up, firefighters in the Inland Empire rushed to two brush fires — one in Hemet and another in Jurupa Valley— that broke out Tuesday afternoon.

Late Monday, firefighters in Oxnard responded to a brush fire that ignited in the Santa Clara River bottom. The Auto fire — fanned by wind gusts of 20 to 30 mph — quickly grew to about 55 acres, but firefighters were able to stop it from progressing.

As firefighters grapple with extreme fire conditions, residents who have lost homes in the Palisades and Eaton fires are wrestling with the overwhelming idea of rebuilding their properties. Many have not been able to return home since the fires began. Firefighters are still in the fire zones working to contain the blazes and comb through wreckage, and utilities are setting up new poles and hanging lines to restore power.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has issued an executive order that seeks to expedite rebuilding efforts, mostly within Pacific Palisades. Bass’ move comes one day after Gov. Gavin Newsom, via his own executive order, waived regulations under state environmental laws in an effort to speed up rebuilding in the Palisades, as well as Altadena and other areas outside the city.

On Tuesday, the governor signed an executive order fast-tracking debris removal from the burn zone. The state is partnering with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Environmental Protection Agency to remove hazardous waste from the area once it is deemed safe, the governor said in an press statement.

With many campuses in the fire areas damaged, parents are also trying to figure out where their children will attend school in the coming weeks. On Tuesday, Newsom also signed an executive order to make it easier for schools to use temporary facilities and allow displaced students to attend schools outside their district.

Officials urged Angelenos to be on alert for new wildfires and prepare to evacuate if needed.

“While peak winds are not expected to be as strong as last week’s wind event, they still pose a tremendous threat. If you’re asked to evacuate, please listen to all evacuation orders as they’re meant as a lifesaving measure,” McDonnell said.

The “particularly dangerous situation” tag given to a swath of Los Angeles and Ventura counties on Wednesday is rare, and has traditionally only been used when forecasters believed long-lived, strong and violent tornadoes were possible. The National Weather Service office in Oxnard, which covers L.A., Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, adopted it in 2020 in hopes of clearly ringing the alarm bell for the most extreme fire weather conditions.

“Any kind of red flag warning is dangerous. But there’s a gradient even within that range of situations, and so we wanted a way to message the extreme of the extremes. And the PDS is what came from that,” said weather service meteorologist Ryan Kittell.

During each of the three warnings issued this season, destructive wildfires erupted: the 19,904-acre Mountain fire, which razed more than 240 buildings in Ventura County last year; the 4,037-acre Franklin fire, which spread rapidly in Malibu and destroyed 20 buildings in December; and last week’s Palisades and Eaton fires.

The extreme fire weather across much of Southern California is being fed by extraordinarily dry conditions. The last significant rain in downtown Los Angeles was on May 5, when 0.13 of an inch of rain fell. Since Oct. 1, only 0.16 of an inch of rain has fallen there — a drop in the bucket compared with the historical average of 5.34 inches that should have fallen by this point in the season.

The last time there has been so little rain between early May and the end of December was 1962, when downtown L.A. got only 0.14 of an inch, according to the weather service.

“In my view,” said retired climatologist Bill Patzert, “the past nine months has been one of the driest in the historical record going back to 1900. During my career, I’ve never seen punishing Santa Ana events so overwhelm the normal winter rain season.”