
Strong winds breathed life into raging wildfires in southern California Tuesday into Wednesday, causing hundreds of thousands of people to lose power and prompting evacuations across the region.
More than 370,000 customers are without power in southern California as of Wednesday morning, with the majority in Los Angeles County. Most of the outages are in Los Angeles Department of Water & Power territory (around 144,000) and in Southern California Edison (around 185,000) service areas, according to poweroutage.us.
Many of the towering fires kicked up Tuesday, fueled by powerful Santa Ana winds, which gusted more than 70 mph (112 kph) in some spots. The winds persisted Wednesday and made it too dangerous for aircraft to attack the fires from the sky, further hampering their efforts.
The Palisades Fire is the largest of the new fires. It started around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday and has thus far burned about 4.5 square miles (11.6 square kilometers), according to officials. Three other fires also affected the region: The Eaton Fire, north of Pasadena in the Altadena area, which started around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, quickly burned 1.6 square miles by early Wednesday according to fire officials. The Hurst Fire started around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday and had grown to 500 acres (202 hectares) by early Wednesday. The Tyler Fire in Coachella was relatively small, burning 15 acres (6 hectares).
The causes of the four fires are still under investigation, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE).
Utility response
Southern California Edison (SCE) initiated a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) for 136,000 of its customers in several counties and said it is considering it for 427,208 more as of Wednesday morning.
On Tuesday evening, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) said it is “all hands on deck” responding to the impacts of the damaging winds. As of 10 pm Tuesday, LADWP said 117,261 of its customers were without power, having restored power to 48,096 customers since the start of the storm. However, as of Wednesday morning, the number of outages had grown to more than 144,000.
The LADWP Emergency Center (EOC) is activated to coordinate its response across the organization and will operate 24/7 until the response returns to normal conditions. The utility is also coordinating with the City of LA Emergency Operations Center. LADWP said its customers can expect crews to respond to outages within 24-48 hours.
This article contains reporting from the Associated Press.