LOS ANGELES—Residents eager to return home and survey vast damage wrought by the Eaton Canyon Fire in northeast Los Angeles County will have to wait, officials said at a community meeting on Jan. 10, offering a mixed outlook on the coming week as first responders grapple with a fire that has exploded in size and remains only 3 percent contained.
The fire has torn through more than 14,000 acres, prompting an evacuation of more than 50,000 residents, killing six people and damaging thousands of structures, while leaving many more without power or potable water.
Many residents don’t know if their homes are still standing.
The area remains a “danger zone,” Williams said, due to active fires, downed wires that could become electrified, felled trees, and debris blocking roadways.
Starting Friday, authorities enacted a daily curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., in an attempt to prevent looting and enhance public safety in the evacuation area.
Those caught violating the curfew, said Williams, will be arrested and subject to a $1,000 fine or jail time.
A Lull Before the Storm
The good news was that easing weather conditions meant firefighters, buoyed by additional surge of resources, finally had a chance at preventing the fire from spreading further.“In the absence of wind, we’re not expecting the fire to make any significant pushes,” said Dennis Burns, a fire behavioral analyst with California’s Interagency Management Team assigned to the area.
After days of heavy, unpredictable winds, Friday marked a turning point for firefighters working on the blaze, with receding weather allowing both ground and aerial crews to work on containing the perimeter.
“Our crews are actually able to go direct on the fire’s edge because it’s not burning super intensely,” Burns said, adding that the “steep and rugged” terrain still prevented firefighters from targeting certain areas, “so they will have to back off and let the fire come to them.”
James White, incident meteorologist for the interagency team, said the extreme winds that drove the fire were backing off day by day.
“So that’s good news—it provides lots of opportunities for improved conditions all around the fire.”
Those improved conditions, he said, will continue Friday, and the area will be “pretty sheltered” from another red flag period beginning late Saturday night or early Sunday morning.
“We’re tracking the potential for another Santa Ana event next week that looks a bit stronger” he said, but concluded the weather will “eventually turn in our favor.”
Brian Ham, an operations chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), said the weekend would give firefighters a chance to prepare for the next round of winds.
“We’ve ordered resources from out of the state—Oregon, Nevada, Texas and locally from around the state. So we have a lot of preposition and resources coming in,” Ham said, pointing to extra engines, water tenders, bulldozers, hand crews and aerial units staging in the area.
As firefighters across the county have been grappling with strained water resources, the water tenders, Ham said, were “a big one” that would help firefighters get an upper hand.
Local crews will also get help from their Mexican counterparts.
More Power, Water Issues
As of 3 p.m. Friday, representatives for Southern California Edison, which supplies power to Altadena, said 172,000 customers remained without power, 108,000 of which were due to public safety shut offs to mitigate fire risks.The expectation for potentially dangerous winds and red flag conditions next could mean more public safety shut offs, they advised.
“We expect there will be challenges through the weekend and into early next week,” said Cody Tubbs, with the utility company’s fire management team, adding that the shutoffs were “a tool of last resort” justified by the dangerous wind conditions of the past several days.
David Reyes, interim general manager for Pasadena Water and Power, which services areas adjacent to Altadena, said there were 395 known outages out of 65,000 accounts.
Meanwhile, representatives for Southern California Gas Company warned a broader swath of residents may be looking at impacted services.
“As we get farther into the area and assess the situation, the devastation and damage to our facilities, we’re looking at we might have to take a little more drastic action and shut off service to a wider area,” said Rodger Schwecke, chief infrastructure officer for SoCal Gas.
That means customers not impacted by the fires could also see their services shut off, he said, before the process of “surgically” and safely restoring power begins.
During the virtual meeting, a live chat stream buzzed continually with questions from residents looking to find out if their homes are still standing and when they could determine whether any personal property was still salvageable.
There was no immediate and conclusive answer to map which structures have been damaged or destroyed, but officials directed residents to the Angeles National Forrest and L.A. County Fire Department social media pages, where a website will be created to help people map the damage.
Mark Pestrella, director of L.A. County Public Works, said the agency was not ready to authorize reentry due to the active nature of the fire and existing hazards—including ash, fallen trees, and hazardous soil, water and air that would require further analysis.
The water systems throughout the burn areas, said Pestrella, remain in question, with the state requiring all water agencies to issue do-not-drink orders, as potential pathogens, ash, and toxic materials pose a threat.
Once treatment systems were up and running, he said, the process usually takes about 48 hours.
“We’re not quite ready to begin that clock yet.”
Cpt. Williams, of the sheriff’s department, said grid searches were set to begin Saturday throughout the area to check structures for damage, and urged residents to file missing persons reports in person at the Pasadena Civic Center.
