Burning Los Angeles homes livestreamed their own destruction as owners watched
When Zibby Owens and her husband installed an internet-connected security system at their home in the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood of Los Angeles, they were thinking of using its cameras to keep tabs on packages, not wildfires.
But on Tuesday, local time, they spent two hours watching a livestream of flames closing in on their home.
“It was like a horror movie,” said Owens, the owner of Zibby’s Bookshop in Santa Monica, who was in New York this week and splits her time between the United States East and West coasts.
Owens said watching the live feed made her feel physically ill at times, yet she was unable to look away.
“I’m glad we were able to see, so that at least we had a bunch of information,” she said. “Otherwise, we could have been in the dark about what was going on out there.”
Story continues after live blog
16 confirmed dead in LA wildfires
Nazahryth Bernard
The number of people confirmed dead in fires that raced through Los Angeles rose to 16 on Saturday, authorities said.
The County of Los Angeles Medical Examiner published a list of fatalities without giving details of any identities.
Five of the dead were found in the Palisades Fire zone, and 11 in the Eaton Fire zone, the document said.
Death toll rises to 13 - reports
Nazahryth Bernard
Authorities have confirmed at least 13 people have died in the Los Angeles wildfires, according to the LA Times, with eight of those occurring in the Eaton blaze.
The Eaton wildfire burned through 14,000 acres and left more than 7000 structures damaged or destroyed, according to Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone.
“Please be assured that we will continue to battle these wildfires until they are fully contained,” Marrone said.
“We stand alongside all of you as we begin to plan for the repopulation of evacuated areas disaster recovery and the rebuilding of your homes and your lives.”
The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner had previously said five deaths were attributed to the Palisades fire.
Search and rescue teams were also looking for 13 people reported missing, although it is unclear if any of those overlapped with those now confirmed dead.
Stay inside to avoid toxic LA wildfire smoke, residents warned
Nazahryth Bernard
Health bosses warn people living in Los Angeles to stay indoors because of dangerous wildfire smoke wreathing the area.
Monster blazes tearing through the city are pumping toxic clouds into the air, blanketing a vast region with choking fumes. "We are all experiencing this wildfire smoke, which is a mix of small particles, gasses and water vapours," Anish Mahajan of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health told a press conference.
"It's those small particles that get into our noses and throats and cause those sore throats and headaches.
"Everyone in the areas where there's visible smoke or the smell of smoke, and even where you don't see that, we know that the air quality is poor, so you should limit outdoor exposure as much as possible."
Multiple fires that have erupted around Los Angeles have laid waste to vast areas, reducing homes, businesses, cars and vegetation to ash.
That means plastics, chemicals, fuel and building materials all went up in smoke, and now hang in the air across a densely populated region.
Earlier this week, Los Angeles County declared a public health emergency because of the smoke, and banned the use of machines like leaf blowers that can whip up dangerous ashes.
- AFP
Among the LA wildfire victims: A great-grandmother, surfer, father, and son
Nazahryth Bernard
As of late Friday afternoon, local time, officials had confirmed 11 deaths – six from the Eaton fire in the northeast part of the county and five from the Palisades fire on the city’s west side.
Here’s what we know so far about some of those individuals.
'She didn't get out': Actress Jennifer Garner loses friend in LA wildfires
Nazahryth Bernard
Jennifer Garner lost a friend in the Los Angeles wildfires.
While the 52-year-old actress confirmed a close friends of hers had died, she admitted she was not quite ready to talk about it as the loss was too raw.
Speaking on MSNBC, she said: “I did lose a friend, and for our church, it’s really tender so I don’t feel like we should talk about it yet. I did lose a friend. She didn’t get out in time.
”My heart bleeds for my friends. I mean, I can think of 100 families, and there are 5000 homes lost.
“I can, without even [thinking], I could just write out a list of 100 friends who lost their homes.“
Garner’s house survived the fires, and her former husband Ben Affleck sought shelter at her house after being evacuated from his own.
The latest figures
Ebba Strand
At least 11 people are known to have died in the chaotic infernos, with 13 reported missing, but the toll is widely expected to rise.
The Palisades fire is now 11% contained and spreading east after burning 9,100ha. The Eaton Fire is at 5600ha and 15% contained.
Five separate fires have destroyed around 12,000 structures, California's fire agency reported. But Todd Hopkins, who is overseeing the Palisades Fire fight, said not all of those buildings were homes.
"Structures can be homes, outbuildings, RVs, automobiles or other types of things like sheds," he said, adding the confirmed total of homes destroyed in the biggest fire was 426.
- AFP
LA mayor denies sacking fire chief
Ebba Strand
Los Angeles city and fire officials have put on a united front following reports of a furious row over the handling of devastating wildfires raging throughout the city.
In an at-times tense press conference, Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass denied a report that she had been planning to fire Los Angeles City Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley.
Crowley, standing alongside Bass, meanwhile said the city's political leaders, fire and police departments were "all on the same page" as they battled the devastating infernos that have left at least 11 people dead.
Crowley had appeared to direct a barb at city leaders earlier this week when she said her department was underfunded.
"My message is the fire department needs to be properly funded," Crowley told Fox television's local network. "It's not."
Hours later, Crowley met Bass in a private meeting at city hall which ran so late that Bass was forced to miss a scheduled news briefing. The Daily Mail later reported on its website that Bass had fired Crowley.
Yet Bass and Crowley denied the reported rift as they stood alongside Los Angeles Police Department chief Jim McDonnell.
"As you see here, the chief and I are lockstep in our number one mission, and that mission is to get us past this emergency," Bass told reporters.
"We want to make sure that we save lives, we save housing, we save businesses, and if there are differences that we have, we will continue to deal with those in private."
Asked if she had been planning to fire Crowley, Bass replied emphatically: "No."
- AFP
Ebba Strand
Australian man Rory Sykes, 32, killed at Malibu home
Ebba Strand
An Australian man living in Los Angeles has died as a fire tore through Malibu.
Rory Callum Sykes, 32, was confirmed to have died in a statement by his mother Shelly Sykes on Twitter.
"I’m totally heart broken", she writes.
Getty art center faces LA flames
Ebba Strand
Wildfires are looming toward the celebrated Getty Center and its priceless collection.
Nestled in the mountains above Los Angeles, the famed art museum is within a new evacuation warning zone as the Palisades Fire roars east toward populated areas.
Dubbed a "beautiful fortress" and constructed of fire-resistant travertine stone, as well as cement and steel, the center has drawn museum experts from around the world to observe its safety system.
Its roofs are covered with crushed stone to prevent embers igniting, and even in the gardens, resilient plants were chosen.
Inside, the galleries can be closed off with a vault-like double door that, museum officials say, is practically impenetrable.
"Getty staff, the art collections and buildings remain safe from the Palisades Fire," the museum said hours before the evacuation warning.
"The threat is still happening," Getty added in an X post.
The museum's unique collection comprises 125,000 artworks -- including paintings by Rembrandt, Turner, Van Gogh and Monet -- and 1.4 million documents. It also houses a research hub and a foundation.
- AFP
LA fire chief says city failed her department
Kurt Bayer
Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley has blasted the City of Los Angeles for failing its more than 100,000 displaced residents who were forced to evacuate from the ongoing wildfire siege.
When asked by Fox News' affiliate, KTTV, if the City of Los Angeles, and its Mayor Karen Bass failed the city, Crowley replied: "Yes."
Crowley said that pressing staffing shortages impacted the department's response time when the blaze began tearing across Los Angeles.
"Any budget cut is going to impact our ability to provide service," she told KTTV. "That is a ground truth in regard to our ability. If there's a budget cut, we had to pull from somewhere else. What does that mean? That doesn't get done or that there are delays."
Pope Francis: 'Saddened by the loss of life'
Ebba Strand
Pope Francis yesterday expressed his sadness over the havoc caused by the giant California wildfires and expressed his spiritual closeness with the victims in a telegram to the archbishop of Los Angeles.
"Saddened by the loss of life and the widespread destruction," the pontiff expressed his "spiritual closeness" with the victims, Vatican number two Pietro Parolin wrote in the telegram.
- AFP
Australian citizen confirmed dead in the LA wildfires
Ebba Strand
Story continues
The couple are among the many Southern California homeowners who this week followed a live feed of distress signals or traumatic video coming from their homes thanks to internet-connected security systems.
The digital rituals of surviving a disaster – marking yourself “safe” on Facebook, sharing first-person footage on X, formerly Twitter, or Instagram, taking a video of everything in your house before evacuating – are constantly expanding.
Internet-connected home security systems becoming cheaper and more widely installed have made the digital ledger of disaster grow ever longer.
About 43% of US households with internet access have a security product with online capabilities such as a self-monitored smart camera, video doorbell, or a professionally monitored security system, said Jennifer Kent, vice-president of research at Parks Associates, a consumer technology market-research firm.
“There is a wide choice of devices and systems on the market today, and the market has grown as self-install solutions, lower-cost devices, and lower-cost services have come to market, attracting middle-income households and renters,” Kent said in an email.
When Kent’s firm surveyed consumers about the services they might like to add to their existing home security systems, 66% indicated they’d be interested in adding fire and gas safety monitoring.
From 4800km away, Owens and her husband clicked between different feeds from the Nest cameras at their home, zooming in as they tried to grasp what was happening. At one point, Owens said, they saw firefighters come through the house and extinguish flames in the backyard.
At around 4.30pm Eastern time on Tuesday, the camera feeds gave out and the updates from their security system stopped. About four hours later, Owens’ husband got an alert on his cellphone that the indoor sprinkler system had gone off and the fire alarm had been activated.
They do not know the current status of their home, Owens said on Tuesday.
Real estate agent Shana Tavangarian Soboroff said in a phone interview that one set of clients had followed their Pacific Palisades home’s ordeal this week in a foreboding play-by-play of text alerts from an ADT security system.
The system first detected smoke, then motion, next that doors had been opened, and finally fire alerts before the system lost communication. Their home’s destruction was later confirmed when someone returned to the neighbourhood and recorded video, Tavangarian Soboroff said.
She has been telling her clients to take videos of everything in their homes before evacuating to help bolster insurance claims if a home is destroyed.
Tavangarian Soboroff and her husband had been living in her parents’ home in the Palisades for the past 15 months while their own house in the neighbourhood underwent renovations. Both houses were lost in the fires.
They had to evacuate so quickly that they did not have time to take a record of everything they had at Tavangarian Soboroff’s parents’ home. “I very much wish I did,” she said.
Sometimes security footage from homes menaced by wildfire, viewed from afar, can be deceiving.
Marika Erdely, the 66-year-old founder and chief executive of a sustainability consulting company, evacuated her Malibu home on Tuesday morning with her cousin and young granddaughter.
Hours later she peeped at footage from her Ring doorbell and other cameras with her daughter in Santa Monica.
The devices didn’t show much happening, Erdely said on Thursday. When they checked again in the evening, they could see flames in the backyard and flying embers circling ominously and getting closer to the home.
Erdely and her daughter watched for about four minutes before the cameras abruptly stopped. Kent said that security systems tend to go down when they lose power or internet connectivity.
“I definitely thought it burned down,” Erdely said. “I was preparing for that.”
Erdely didn’t sleep at all that night, she said, assuming her home had been destroyed.
Her daughter, Alex Pearlman, who shared the footage on social media, recalled in a phone interview that several of her mother’s neighbours also watched security footage from their homes after they evacuated.
The next day, Erdely was surprised to receive confirmation that her home was still standing. She first spotted it in news coverage and later that day received a photo taken by neighbours showing her home still standing, in an area where many others weren’t as fortunate.
“I feel so lucky,” Erdely said.
However, without power or gas in her Malibu neighbourhood, she’s uncertain about when she’ll be able to return. In the meantime, she filled out an application to rent a place down the street from her daughter.
“Who knows when I’ll be able to really live in my home?” she said.
Lisa Bonos is a tech culture reporter in San Francisco. She joined the Washington Post in 2005 and previously worked on the financial, editorial and outlook sections.