Los Angeles residents begin looking through the rubble of their burnt homes for surviving items: photos
By Elizabeth Karpen






Tens of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate their homes in Southern California as wildfire rages Wednesday across the Pacific Palisades and surrounding areas.
Wind gusts topping 100 miles per hour have caused several fires to grow from non-existent to out-of-control within a matter of minutes in some places.
At least five people are dead, and thousands of structures have been destroyed.
This live blog has ended. Follow The Post’s ongoing live updates on the LA fires here.
Los Angeles residents begin looking through the rubble of their burnt homes for surviving items: photos
By Elizabeth Karpen 






Sun rises on West Coast as third day of LA wildfires rages on: photos
By Elizabeth Karpen 




President Joe Biden will address the country about the wildfire situation in Los Angeles after President Jimmy Carter’s funeral in Washington D.C.
“This morning, I was briefed on the latest impacts of the Los Angeles wildfires,” the president tweeted on Thursday morning.
“And later today, following President Carter’s service, I will convene my team for another briefing, and deliver remarks to the nation regarding our response,” he added.
On Wednesday, Biden visited Los Angeles where he met with Gov. Gavin Newsom and issued a major disaster declaration for California which will make federal funds available to affected individuals in Los Angeles County.
“We’re prepared to do anything and everything as long as it takes to contain these fires and help reconstruct, make sure we get to normal,” Biden said at a Santa Monica fire station, according to CNN.
“It’s going to be a hell of a long way, it’s going to take time, but the federal government is here to stay as long as you need it and everything you need.”
Biden canceled his planned trip to Italy to deal with the disaster.
Evacuation orders from the Sunset Fire in the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles were lifted on Thursday morning, officials announced.
“At 7:30 a.m., the closed section of the Sunset Fire, area North of Franklin, will be OPEN and all evacuation orders LIFTED,” the Los Angeles Fire Department stated in an update.
Residents were asked to exercise caution while returning to their homes, as fire officials were still working in the area.
Thousands of residents were forced to flee due to the Sunset Fire, which sparked around 6 p.m. local time Wednesday and torched 43 acres — but most of that were lifted in an update from officials just after midnight, KTLA reported.
“Fortunately, the Sunset Fire is under control,” LAFD spokesperson Margaret Stewart told reporters Thursday morning.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is catching heat for putting Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on blast for “abandoning” his constituents during Texas’ power crisis in 2021 while she raced home to California.
“Ted Cruz fleeing Texas in the middle of a deadly crisis is part of a larger pattern of the GOP abandoning folks in crisis,” Bass tweeted in February 2021, when Cruz went on a family vacation to Mexico as winter storms left millions without electricity, causing hundreds of Texans to freeze to death.
“We need to build a movement to kick them all out,” Bass added.

The mayor has been catching heat for being 7,400 miles away in Africa to attend the inauguration of Ghana’s president as wildfires devoured Los Angeles.
She returned to LA on Wednesday and said she was in “constant contact” with city officials while abroad.
Bass addressed her absence during the late afternoon press conference, claiming she did her best to return and help.

“I took the fastest route back, which included being on a military plane, which facilitated our communications,” Bass said.
“So I was able to be on the phone the entire time of the flight.”
Some of the biggest stars in Hollywood are among the 30,000 (and counting) Los Angeles residents who have been forced to evacuate their homes due to the devastating wildfires in Southern California.

The crisis started with the Pacific Palisades Fire on Tuesday morning, followed by more fires that sparked in the neighboring areas including Eaton and Woodley.
Anthony Hopkins, Billy Crystal, Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag, and Adam Brody and Leighton Meester are among the stars who have lost their homes in the fires.
Here’s the full list of celebs impacted by the wildfires.
Big Hollywood names have started to turn on Los Angeles’ Democratic leadership, including Mayor Karen Bass, over the botched response to the wildfires raging across the ritzy, celeb-filled Pacific Palisades and surrounding areas.
Actress Sarah Michelle Gellar led the charge, criticizing the Democratic leadership on Instagram for failing to direct the tens of thousands of Southern California residents trying to flee as the fires burned uncontained Wednesday.

“City of LA you want everyone to evacuate yet you have complete gridlock and not one traffic cop on the roads helping,” Gellar wrote, tagging Bass and the city of Los Angeles.
The Palisades Fire has been ravaging the celebrity-dotted neighborhood since Tuesday, and has burned a horrifying 17,234 acres (27 square miles) over the past 36 hours.
Desperately needed water supplies are beginning to “stabilize” a day after firefighters battling the raging Palisades Fire in Los Angeles said the hydrants had run dry, LA fire officials said.
“It was a challenge early. No reports overnight of any issues with water (and) water pressure,” Jim Hudson of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection told CNN Wednesday morning.
“We’ve worked around some mitigations for that, and the water system is starting to stabilize.”
Three million-gallon storage tanks in the area had been filled before the wildfires erupted — buy that was not enough to keep up with the “extreme demand” needed to douse the raging fire, according to Los Angeles Fire Department spokesperson Erik Scott.
Roughly 20% of the hydrants used to fight the Palisades Fire were emptied, city Department of Water and Power CEO Janisse Quiñones told reporters. Officials said mobile water tankers have been deployed to the front lines of the fire, which has exploded to more than 17,200 acres (27 square miles) and remains 0% contained.
Actor Sebastian Harrison hid behind rocks as his $2.4 million Malibu mansion was engulfed in flames when he was unable to flee due to car troubles.
“I stayed, even though everyone, you know, the police came and they said, ‘Evacuate,’ and everyone had left, I was the only one there,” Harrison, 59, told the Telegraph.
The B-movie star, who appeared in spaghetti Westerns and other foreign films over the decades, rushed back to the beachfront property Tuesday night as fast-spreading wildfires began devastating Los Angeles.

He said he helped get his 89-year-old father, who is also a former actor, before trying to protect the 3-acre property he purchased in 2010. Harrison watered the roof of the home with a hose and removed his outdoor furniture — but it was no help and the blaze was soon at his doorstep.
"I'm still hiding behind the boulders,” Harrison said in a video posted on social media, showing his home completely swallowed by flames.
He said he tried to drive away in his Mercedes but couldn’t get it to start.
“It was hell. It was inferno ... I really couldn’t see because of all the orange, breathing smoke and everything ... I fell on my rib, and then I just took cover behind the rocks, and there were sheets of embers just going over me,” he told the Telegraph.

He eventually found a working car and drove through the streets, filming the hellish landscape around him. Firefighters came to his rescue around 9 p.m. and, moments later, the car caught fire.
Harrison described his journey to safety as “treacherous.”