California fires live: Los Angeles prepared for severe winds expected in coming days, mayor says

About 35,000 homes and businesses without electricity in Los Angeles – data
34,646 homes and businesses in Los Angeles are now without electricity, according to Poweroutage.us, an outage monitor that tracks blackouts across the US.
Roughly 18,400 Southern California Edison customers remain without power, as well as about 16,100 Los Angeles Department of Water & Power customers, and about 100 with Pasadena Water and Power, according to the latest data.
Here is the latest data showing the number of people without power in some of the other areas of California:
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San Bernardino: 8,333
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Riverside: 7, 152
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Santa Barbara: 2,081
In an update posted to X a few hours ago, the LA Department of Water & Power said since the fires started on Tuesday they have restored power to over 355,000 customers.
Key events
Here are some images coming through the newswires from Los Angeles where multiple wildfires are still burning:
Speaking at the press conference, Anish Mahajan, chief deputy director of LA county public health, said that the “air quality is improving as we have seen the smoke lessen with the better containment of the fires at this time”.
He went on to add:
County residents should continue to monitor the air quality index, the AQI levels, wherever they are, but we are seeing improved AQI numbers, and so we encourage residents who are closest to the fire, who are smelling smoke or seeing it, who have the AQI levels in the unhealthy zones, to be using masks when they’re outside.”
In response to a question on whether there is concern about the animosity coming from Donald Trump towards California and its efforts to fight the wildfires, Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass said:
Actually, I’m not worried about that. I mean, I joined in the invitation to the incoming president to come to Los Angeles. I joined with the supervisor and the governor, spoke directly with the incoming administration yesterday. It was a fine call so I’m not concerned about that. There are also, as I mentioned before, a number of my former colleagues who are up for confirmation. I feel like I will have good relations.”
Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass said that she believes the city is prepared for the severe gusts of wind that are to be expected in the coming days.
In response to a question on whether the city is prepared in regards to fire hydrants and water pressure, Bass said that she will be recieiving reports in a few hours from other city departments and maintained confidence in the city’s preparedness.
More than 13,000 people have donated over $6m to the California Community Foundation to help wildfire relief efforts, Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass said.
“People are coming from everywhere to help us and make sure that we are ready for the days ahead. So to them, I want to say thank you,” Bass said.
Richard Luscombe
The Los Angeles fire chief, Kristin Crowley, told the press conference that city officials were unified and focused on tackling the tragedy.
Last week, Crowley was vocal about how water supply issues and budget cuts “failed” her firefighters, allowing Donald Trump and other Republicans to seize on her comments as evidence that the Democratic Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass and other officials were guilty of mismanagement, before and during the fires.
She did not address the controversy directly but said her focus would be the forecast uptick in winds that threatens to expand the deadly Palisades fire:
I want to be very, very clear here. It’s very important that the community understands that these wind events are coming into Los Angeles. I want to reassure you that Mayor Bass, [police chief James] McDonnell, and I, are united and focused on exactly what we need to do to prepare the city with these next strong winds that are coming.
Kathryn Barger, chair of the LA county board of supervisors, said she had written to invite Trump to the city so he can see “the desperate needs, but also the incredible opportunity, hope and perseverance of our impacted neighbors”.
Los Angeles police chief Jim McDonnell said that a curfew is still being enforced in the Los Angeles city areas where mandatory evacuations are still in place.
“The order will remain in place tonight, curfew order from 6pm to 6am and unless you are a public safety personnel or some other disaster worker, you have no reason to be at these locations,” he said.
Los Angeles sheriff Robert Luna also warned against those who are “thinking about scamming, using this incident to take advantage of residents that have already been victimized”.
Luna said that state and federal authorities are all “eager to prosecute anybody who is taking advantage of our residents during this very difficult time, whether it is a burglary or it is some kind of white collar crime in a scam or anything that you may be thinking about doing”.
The Los Angeles sheriff Robert Luna added that the sheriff’s department currently has 16 missing persons reported.
Those include 12 in Eaton and four in Palisades.
Luna added that there are no juveniles that are missing within those numbers as of this moment.
Los Angeles county sheriff Robert Luna is currently speaking about search and rescue efforts across the Eaton area.
“Yesterday, we started a search and rescue operation out in the Eaton area, where, in the first day of this operation, grid searching, we searched approximately 364 properties in the Altadena area. And unfortunately, during that search, we did locate three deceased,” Luna said.
Los Angeles authorities are giving a live briefing on the wildfires across the county:
Here’s new aerial footage of the California wildfires spreading:
Current state of Los Angeles wildfires
This is the current state of the Los Angeles wildfires as of Sunday morning, according to CalFire:
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Palisades: Burned 23,707 acres, 11% contained
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Eaton: Burned 14,117 acres, 15% contained
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Kenneth: Burned 1,052 acres, 100% contained
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Hurst: Burned 799 acres, 76% contained
Summary of the day so far…
It has just gone past 7am in Los Angeles, where firefighters are continuing to battle three fires – Palisades, Eaton and Hurst – that are ravaging the city. Here is the latest on the LA fires:
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At least 16 people have been killed so far in the California fires, with 11 attributed to the Eaton Fire and five to the Palisades, while 13 other residents remain missing.
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Authorities issued new evacuation orders for eastern communities threatened by the Palisades fire late last night, including parts of the affluent Brentwood area.
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More than 100,000 people are under evacuation orders. There are reports of California residents who have lost their homes struggling to find new places to live because some landlords and businesses are illegally raising prices to a very high level.
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Tens of thousands of homes and businesses in Los Angeles are still without electricity.
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At least 20 arrests have been made for looting. Among them were two looters who posed as firefighters when entering houses, according to the police.
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Officials have imposed a mandatory curfew in evacuation zones as well as in the city of Santa Monica, which is next to Pacific Palisades.
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California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has doubled the deployment of the state’s national guard to Los Angeles amid the wildfires.
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The cause of the fires, which started on Tuesday, has yet to be determined.
Crews from California and nine other states are part of the ongoing response to the fires that includes 1,354 fire engines, 84 aircraft and more than 14,000 personnel, Michael Traum, of the California office of emergency services, has said.
As well as neighbouring countries Canada and Mexico, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon and Washington have all sent firefighters to Los Angeles as part of the emergency relief effort.
The National Weather Service has warned that strong Santa Ana winds could soon return. These winds have been largely blamed for turning wildfires into the infernos that have wreaked so much destruction across large swathes of California.
Here are some of the latest images being sent to us over the newswires from Los Angeles, where four fires continue to rage:
What do we know about the LA fires victims?
The Eaton fire, in the north of the city around Pasadena, covering 14,117 acres, has killed 11 people, including: Victor Shaw, 66, Anthony Mitchell, 67, who was an amputee, and his son Justin, who had cerebral palsy and was in his early 20s, Rodney Nickerson, 82, and Erliene Kelley, a retired pharmacy technician in Altadena who lived very close to Shaw and Nickerson. The Eaton Fire is the second largest and is estimated to be about 15% contained. You can read more about the people who have died since the wildfires started on Tuesday here.
The Palisades fire, which is roughly 11% contained and covers 23,654 acres, has killed five people, reportedly including Randall Miod, 55, a long-time Malibu resident who died in his home, according to his mother, Australian former child actor Rory Sykes, 32, who died after his mother was unable to evacuate him, and Annette Rossilli, 85, who reportedly refused to evacuate her Pacific Palisades home after she was told to after the start of the Palisades fire. 13 other people remain missing.
As we have been reporting (see post at 09.37), US president-elect, Donald Trump, has criticised California governor Gavin Newsom’s forest management policies and falsely claimed the state’s fish conservation efforts are responsible for fire hydrants running dry in urban areas. He has called for the Democratic governor to resign.
In 2019, during his first term as president, Trump criticised Newsom’s forest management that he said had contributed to devastating fires. Last week, he criticised the state’s water management policies in social media posts the governor and other officials dismissed as false or misleading.
“One of the best and most beautiful parts of the United States of America is burning down to the ground,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. Posting on Truth Social six hours ago, he wrote:
The fires are still raging in LA. The incompetent pols have no idea how to put them out. Thousands of magnificent houses are gone, and many more will soon be lost. There is death all over the place. This is one of the worst catastrophes in the history of our Country. They just can’t put out the fires. What’s wrong with them?
Trump, who has dismissed the climate crisis, has promised to drill for more oil and cut back on renewable energy when he returns to the White House later this month.