Strong winds that sent wildfires ripping through the mountains and foothills around Los Angeles on Wednesday fed a spectacle of smoke, flames and flight.
The blaze left an apocolympic wake of destruction. A burned out car sat on a street, with so much smoke in the surrounding sky that the sun barely shown through. An outside swimming pool was surrounded by palm trees, singed and blacked by fire, yet still standing. A statue of a human, without a head, lay on a street surrounded by the debris of burned houses. And the world famous Hollywood sign, a reference point for Angelinos that is a symbol of the movie industry’s glitz, was hard to spot amid so much grey smoke.
Beginning Tuesday night, vivid orange flames lit the sky in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, where firefighters dragged hoses to meet blazes flaring up in brush dried out by persistent drought. Others fought to protect structures from the fires.
Firefighters raced to try to beat the flames back from homes. One firefighter lugged a hose in front of a house engulfed in flames while another, standing on a roof of a smoldering home, sprayed water downward. In the sky, a helicoper dropped water in an area where hills intersperced with homes and flames. Meanwhile, a woman stood outside of her garage, hand on her head, as a firetruck sprayed water on a neighboring house.
The fast-moving fires forced thousand of residents to evacuate. Authorities moved to get the most vulnerable out first, such as people in a senior center. One woman was brought out in a wheelchair, wrapped in a blanket. Another woman, also in a wheelchair, wore a mask, her eyes conveying fear.
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