‘This is a time of grief’: Smoking ruins in Los Angeles stand as silent sentinels to lives ruined

On the third day, the fires kept burning.

They continued to destroy homes and businesses, trigger evacuations and stretch emergency workers to their limits across an almost unimaginable swath of the Los Angeles area on Thursday.

The largest of the blazes, known as the Palisades Fire, swelled to 6900 hectares — an area bigger than the island of Manhattan — and devoured thousands of structures in its path.

The ongoing catastrophe across Southern California has claimed at least five lives, though officials said they expect that toll to rise.

“It is safe to say that the Palisades Fire is one of the most destructive natural disasters in the history of Los Angeles,” Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley told reporters, saying the fire remained entirely uncontained.

And yet, that devastating fire was merely one of at least five that continued to wreak havoc around the heavily populated region — including the Eaton Fire, which has burned more than 13,000 acres and also remained largely uncontained.

Nearly 200,000 people across Los Angeles County had been ordered to flee their homes, and roughly the same number remained under evacuation warnings Thursday, officials said.

The day began with a respite from fierce Santa Ana winds that had fuelled the fire spread for two days. Winds subsided across Southern California on Wednesday night, allowing firefighters to once again attack the flames from the air.

But how long that respite would last remained uncertain.

Another surge of winds was forecast into Friday, with gusts up to 96km/h and potentially higher in the mountains.

“I want to be very clear here . . . We are still under red-flag warning with extreme fire-behaviour possibilities,” Crowley said Thursday.

Many residents had begun to grapple with the magnitude of all that had been lost so far.

“This is testing even the strongest among us,” Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said.

“This is a time of grief.”

That much was true even far from the flames.

Hajime White picked up the phone Wednesday morning to hear her father’s voice on the other end of the line.

“He said, ‘Baby, I’m just letting you know the fire’s broke out, and we’re going to have to evacuate,’” Ms White, a doula in Warren, Arkansas, recounted Thursday.

“Then he said, ‘I’ve gotta go — the fire’s in the yard’.”

Her father, Anthony Mitchell, 67, was a retired salesman and wheelchair-using amputee who lived in Altadena with his son, Justin, who was in his early 20s and bedridden from cerebral palsy, White said.

Another one of his sons, Jordan, also in his 20s, normally lived with the pair but was in the hospital with an infection, and none of their caregivers were on hand to help.

A few hours later, Ms White got the news they didn’t survive.

“It’s like a ton of bricks just fell on me,” she said.

Ms White remembered her father as a bighearted man who loved his four children, 11 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

“He had nicknames for everybody: Strawberry Shortcake, Marshmallow, Bug. He just went on and on,” she said.

Her half brother, Justin, struggled with his disability but used a computer to read and communicate.

Their deaths were part of what will probably be a growing toll from the fires.

While authorities have said at least five people died in the Eaton Fire, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert G. Luna said Thursday that the real tally remains unknown.

Authorities trying to account for fatalities “are working under very difficult conditions,” he said.

“At some point, we’ll be able to do a more thorough search of these impacted areas — some of them look like a bomb was dropped on them — where we will be able to bring in canines and other things to help us (and) hopefully not discover too many fatalities.”

Even as authorities searched for the dead, those who had survived faced uncertainty and agony.

“Everything we have is gone,” said Lloyd Hale, 54, who evacuated to a shelter with his wife, Farrah Caceres, from where they lived near Runyon Canyon.

Hale, who said he receives disability benefits from the military, said the destruction of his home left him at a loss.

The Red Cross, which is running the shelter, will keep it open “as long as needed,” spokeswoman Carmela Burke said.

But Hale said he can’t stay forever, and he doesn’t know what to do once he leaves.

“I could pay for a hotel for maybe a few days or something,” he said.

Jim Orlandi, the owner of the destroyed Altadena Hardware store, lives on a curving, palm-tree-lined boulevard overlooking Eaton Canyon.

He spent Wednesday battling the flames with hoses at the homes of both his sons.

Mr Orlandi was frustrated by the firefighters he saw watching the destruction.

“There were times we were at a house, and the houses are burning, and there’s a fire truck and a crew sitting there, and we’re like, ‘What are you guys doing?’” he recalled.

“They’re like, ‘We can’t do anything. We don’t have any water.’”

His neighbour, John Greg Haines, 75, a retired computer-design engineer, said Los Angeles County over the past year has been sending notices to homes, including his, warning of fines and citations if brush was not cleared around houses.

“And yet they let the canyon up here completely grow this high with dead weeds. Did nothing about it. And that’s where the fire started,” he said.

As the crisis wore on, questions remained about whether the area could have been better prepared for such a disaster, and what else could have been done to prevent such far-reaching devastation.

Los Angeles City Council member Traci Park, who represents parts of Pacific Palisades, told The Post on Wednesday that “chronic under-investment in the city of Los Angeles in our public infrastructure” played a role in the devastating blazes in the city.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Thursday pushed back on criticisms about the management of the fire and the number of resources.

“The winds continue to be of a historic nature and a key factor of this firestorm,” Bass said at a news conference, calling the size and scope of the fires “unprecedented”.

“We also know that fire hydrants are not constructed to deal with this type of massive devastation, and that the number one problem, especially on . . . Wednesday, was the fact that we weren’t able to do the air support because of the winds,” Bass said in response to a question about reports that firefighters did not have adequate access to water at times.

“And so, of course, I am absolutely frustrated by that.”

By Thursday evening, much uncertainty and angst remained.

Forecasters said winds were expected to remain blustery into Friday.

Another Santa Ana wind event is possible early next week.

Authorities issued the latest round of evacuation orders related to yet another blaze, the Kenneth Fire.

But for the moment, residents such as Christian Swegal were doing their best to hold on in any way they could.

“I gotta stop this,” he had told his wife Wednesday night, as flames coming from his next-door neighbour’s house pierced the darkness.

Soon, the 41-year-old saw headlamps moving down his dark street off Lake Avenue in Altadena.

His neighbours came, with buckets and a garbage can filled with water from a pool.

Throughout the night they kept the flames at bay.

On Thursday, his neighbours’ home was still smouldering.

Burned clothes and comic books were strewn about. Most of the block was gone. Swegal and a friend continued to pour water and shovel dirt on the charred house, trying to keep the embers from spreading to the home he has owned since 2020.

“We’re just out here trying to stop it,” he said, “and hope the wind doesn’t shift.”

Partlow and Kirkpatrick reported from Altadena, California. Dennis reported from Durham, N.C. Annie Gowen, Daniel Wu, Maeve Reston, Tobi Raji, Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Ben Noll and Matt Viser contributed to this report.

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