STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's begin our coverage of the Los Angeles-area wildfires with a voice from the evacuation zone. It's the voice of journalist Adria Kloke, who shared this account with our member station, KCRW host Steve Chiotakis.
STEVE CHIOTAKIS, BYLINE: How are you doing?
ADRIA KLOKE, BYLINE: Well, pretty rattled. It's not something anyone ever wants to go through. This is my third fire of my lifetime. Lost two homes already. So I know what to do, which puts me into at least a slightly better position than some of my neighbors.
CHIOTAKIS: What are you seeing right now? You're in the car.
KLOKE: Yes, it's just pea soup. It's - you can't see just a few feet in front of you. Everybody's heading the same direction. The gusts are absolutely wild.
INSKEEP: So much smoke that it's hard to understand what's really going on. To get a bigger picture, we spoke with Margaret Stewart, who is a public information officer with LA Fire earlier this morning.
How would you describe the situation right now?
MARGARET STEWART: This is a extreme fire weather conditions and combined with the topography that each of these fires are burning in, it's a very dangerous situation. We have two separate fires in the city, but we have the Palisades fire estimated several hours ago at 2,900 acres. We know that's grown, but we won't be able to provide an update on that until we can get aircraft in the air. We have evacuation zone which covers approximately 30,000 residents, but that is a continually growing fire. We do not have containment. We can not stop a fire like this from the ground. The winds are gusting in excess of 80 miles an hour. The second fire is the Hurst fire up at Sylmar area. We have an evacuation zone that covers about 6,000 residents, and then we have a warning zone that covers about another 30,000 residents.
INSKEEP: When you say winds in excess of 80 miles an hour, that is a Category 1 hurricane. That would be difficult for firefighters to stand, much less do their jobs, I would think.
STEWART: Absolutely. It's a dangerous situation. They've got debris flying. Your hose lines are ineffective because the wind just blows the water away, as well as flying embers, the smoke, the visibility. It's extremely difficult job. That's why it's so important that I mention all those evacuation zones and the warnings because we need residents to adhere to those and evacuate early. Those that are in the warning zone - and they can see the map on lafd.org/news - we need them to be ready to go. They need to have the go bags in the vehicle, the vehicles in the driveway facing out. They need to have a plan in place, and if they can evacuate early, go now.
INSKEEP: I'm thinking about the way that wildfires spread. Often they're embers. They get up in the wind. They can go a long way. They can go over a whole neighborhood or a whole mountain to burn something on the other side. And you're essentially telling me this fire could spread to a new area at 80 miles an hour because that's the speed of the wind. Am I right?
STEWART: True. It's what we call an ember cast, and it can carry sparks a mile away and start a new fire. That's the extreme risk in this type of weather pattern.
INSKEEP: You also used the word topography. You said the topography makes this especially difficult to deal with. What did you mean by that?
STEWART: So we have - you know, these are in our mountain ranges. So the downdrafts that the fire creates, combined with the mountain, it pushes the fire down. It also makes it nearly impossible for - on the ground for us to reach those pockets of fire because of the terrain. We aren't able to do water drops right now because of the winds, so we are limited to the ground and that means we are defending property, protecting lives, but we can not stop the fire this way.
INSKEEP: How much is Los Angeles prepared for events like this, by which I mean long-term changes to architecture, building codes, planning, vegetation, to make things more fire resistant?
STEWART: Yeah. That's not a question that I'm going to really be able to delve into at this point. We have brush control and brush clearance plans and inspections that are in place. There are building codes that, you know, are required to be met, but for individual homes, it's up to a individual's personal responsibility to do what we call harden their homes. So there are steps they can take to make them more fire resistant. But for private residencies, that's on them if they're going to choose to invest in their home in that way.
INSKEEP: Got it. And one other thing - when you talk about people being ready to move with the vehicle pointed out in the driveway, you might have to go in a moment's notice, does that apply to millions of people, possibly, because the fire can spread so quickly?
STEWART: The city of LA is 4 million people. So that's not the case right now. You know, between the two fires combined, the population that's within our zones is less than 50,000.
INSKEEP: I'm thinking about famous landmarks that are not very far from this fire. Hollywood, the Hollywood sign, Santa Monica, those kinds of things. Are they in the danger zone?
STEWART: If you're looking at the map for - and you look at the southeast portion of our evacuation zone, that's where Santa Monica abuts. So they have an evacuation order for, like, the northwest portion of the city that is adjacent to the fire. The rest of Santa Monica is not under an evacuation order. And the direction of the fire is not towards the Hollywood Hills...
INSKEEP: Good.
STEWART: ...And the wind is pushing it away from that direction. The direction of burn is towards the ocean.
INSKEEP: Margaret Stewart of LA Fire. Thank you so much.
STEWART: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF THOMAS NEWMAN'S "APRIL") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
