Los Angeles wildfires kill five and trigger exodus as firefighters battle blazes

No details have been provided about the deaths. Marrone warned that the winds fanning the fires are “placing all residents of Los Angeles County in danger.” 

So far, tens of thousands of Los Angeles residents have been ordered to evacuate and officials urged residents to heed the warnings to get out.

“As the fires pop up, nobody knows where the next one will be,” Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said.

Meanwhile, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and local fire officials briefed President Joe Biden at a Santa Monica fire station. Biden also approved a major disaster declaration that will clear the way for federal funds and resources to be dispatched to California.

“The governor asked for a declaration of what provides for everything the federal government can do, and I’m prepared to sign it today, folks,” Biden said.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department has already requested mutual aid from Orange, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. Firefighters from as far away as Nevada, Oregon and Washington state were also racing to Los Angeles to help the local firefighters battling the blazes on the front lines.

The fires are “stretching the capacity of our emergency services to their maximum limits,” said Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin M. Crowley.

In some parts of the city, the battle already appeared to be lost.

Much of Pacific Palisades, a neighborhood of 23,000 people about 20 miles west of downtown Los Angeles that has been home to movie stars and Holocaust survivors, was reduced to ashes with more than 1,000 homes wiped out and most of the residents gone.

“The whole city has just burned to the ground,” Vanessa Pellegrini, co-owner of Vittorio Ristorante & Pizzeria, told MSNBC. “There’s nothing we can do.”

No deaths were reported, but officials said dozens of residents who had not evacuated, along with firefighters who battled the blazes, have been injured.

Some of the area’s most famous residents, like “Police Academy” star Steve Guttenberg, said “people are really panicking and really scared right now.”

“Most people have evacuated their homes. But the fire is really raging. These winds are terrible, the winds are so hot,” he told MSNBC’s Chris Jansing. “It was like a volcano.”

The section of the Pacific Coast Highway that runs through Pacific Palisades was completely shut down. So were many of the other major arteries in the western end of Los Angeles closest to the Pacific Ocean.