A perfect storm of overgrown vegetation, dry conditions and uncharacteristic winds are responsible for whipping up the most devastating wildfire Los Angeles has ever seen with more than 20 square miles razed to the ground in less than 48 hours.
The stunning time-lapse, stitched together from various live webcams, showed how a small plume of grey smoke began rising in a ’back garden’ on the city’s outskirts on Tuesday morning.
At first the smoke seemed innocuous but within minutes the plume had developed into a thick cloud as the flames began tearing through bone-dry shrubbery.
Before long, the City of Angels was ablaze and now, less than 48 hours on from the initial spark, the wildfire is on track to be the most destructive blaze ever, having ripped through the glitzy celebrity mansions and causing an estimated $48 billion in damage.
LA Fire Chief Kristin Crowley believes the fire started accidentally in a back garden around 10am Tuesday morning. She told reporters the fire is ’spreading at a speed beyond anything we’ve seen... it’s now unlike anything we have seen in our lifetime.’
The prospect of such an infernal firestorm was raised by podcaster and comedian Joe Rogan last summer, who recounted a chilling conversation he’d had with an LA firefighter.
Speaking to guest and fellow comedian Sam Morril in the July 2024 episode, Rogan recounted: ’He said: ’’One day, it’s just gonna be the right wind and fire’s gonna start in the right place and it’s gonna burn through LA all the way to the ocean and there’s not a f***ing thing we can do about it’’.
’If the wind hits the wrong way, it’s just going to burn through LA,’ he said.
The firefighter’s prediction, as told by Rogan, appears to have been proven true, with environmental conditions and unfavourable winds whipping the wildfire into an uncontrollable state.
Meanwhile, scientists at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) have put the fire down to a global pattern of what they’re calling ’hydroclimate whiplash’ – rapid swings between intensely wet and dangerously dry weather.
Experts say that heavy rains from El Niño last year fueled vegetation growth in the Los Angeles area, which had since dried out and become highly flammable.
Once the flames ignited, SoCal was battered by ’devil winds’, formally known as Santa Ana winds - warm and gusty northeast winds that blow from the region’s interior toward the coast, unlike the usual winds which come in from the Pacific and blow cooler, more moist air inland.
According to UCLA experts, after years of severe drought, dozens of ’atmospheric rivers’ – long, narrow bands of water vapor in the atmosphere – deluged California with record-breaking rain in the winter of 2022-23.
This buried mountain towns in snow, flooding valleys with rain and snow melt and setting off hundreds of landslides.
Following a second wet winter in southern California in 2023-24, last year brought a record-hot summer.
The combination of wet and hot conditions spurred the growth of more vegetation, and now with record-dry start to the 2025 rainy season, that greenery is ’tinder-dry’.
The Santa Ana winds then fanned the flames through this dry vegetation leading to the out-of-control fires.
Huge swathes of iconic California real estate from Malibu to Santa Monica, and from Pacific Palisades to Runyon Canyon, are ablaze - impacting millions caught off guard by the unprecedented spread and carnage.
As of Thursday morning, the largest inferno has consumed nearly 12,000 acres (4,856 hectares) in the picturesque Pacific Palisades neighborhood that is home to many film, television and music stars.
In Studio City, several homes caught alight late on Wednesday after a fire broke out in a four-storey building and spread to neighboring properties.
At least five people have lost their lives in the disaster so far, with 2,000 structures obliterated and thousands of people left with nothing but ash across the city.
The death toll is expected to rise as police and fire services prepare to deploy K-9 units trained to sniff out human remains.
More than 130,000 people are still under evacuation orders in Southern California as several notable TV, film and music stars took to social media to announce they had lost their homes.
Mandy Moore, Cary Elwes, Paris Hilton, James Woods, Billy Crystal and his wife Janice all claimed to have seen their homes go up in smoke in the Palisades Fire.
Private forecaster AccuWeather estimated initial damage and economic loss at more than $50billion (£40billion).
California Governor Gavin Newsom meanwhile became emotional when asked about Donald Trump placing the blame on him for the disastrous wildfires, after the president-elect referred to the California Governor as ’Gavin Newscum’ and said he was at fault for the disaster.
Trump’s remark came as LA real estate developer Rick Caruso, whose Palisades Village properties were demolished by the inferno, blamed the shocking issue on ’mismanagement’ and ’systemic problems’ in the city after it emerged the hydrants were not filled by reservoir water.
’This is a window into a systemic problem of the city — not only of mismanagement, but our infrastructure is old,’ he said, as the LA Times reported that firefighters were radioing their stations with reports that the hydrants were dry.
He went onto rail against LA Mayor Karen Bass - who was out of the country as the fire tore through the city earlier this week - and the Department of Water and Power (DWP) in a stern interview delivered to FOX News.
Caruso - himself a former commissioner of the city’s Board of Water and Power - declared: ’Everybody knew these winds were coming... you got to have water and my understanding is that the reservoir was not filled on time, or in a timely manner.
’This is basic stuff... it’s all about leadership and management that we’re seeing a failure of and all of these residents are paying the ultimate price for that... Why don’t you call the mayor, who’s out of the country, and ask her? (why the fire hydrants are dry)’, he concluded.
More than 1,500 California firefighters are tasked with quelling the wind-whipped wildfires, while the California National Guard prepares to deploy more military personnel to assist.
Already, 600 service members have arrived from the Cal Guard along with equipment to help local authorities. They brought 10 rotary wing aircrafts and two C-130 planes to help fight the fires.
K-9s which specialize in human-remains detection will be brought in once the fires are under control to ensure there are no other dead bodies in the wreckage of the fires, LA County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said on Wednesday evening.
Late Wednesday night, there were fears that the fire could spread to nearby brush and that embers could be picked up with the wind and travel through the hills of SoCal.
Adam Vangerpen, spokesperson for LA County Fire, told KTLA ’with the winds picking up there in the hills, that is a concern.’
Meanwhile in Hollywood Hills, a powerful fire was blazing within one mile of the iconic Walk of Fame, forcing evacuations from the famed Hollywood Boulevard and sparking mass panic on the roads as residents and tourists fled.
An urgent evacuation alert read: ’A Mandatory Evacuation Order is now in place for Laurel Canyon Blvd (on the west) to Mulholland Dr (on the north) to 101 Freeway (on the east) down to Hollywood Blvd (on the south).’
That fire would need to cross the 101 Freeway to endanger the Hollywood sign and Griffith Observatory further up in the hills.
Witnesses who spotted the new blaze said that the flames ’exploded in size,’ because the area is fertile with dense brush that is unfortunately spurring on the inferno.
Fire crews are dropping water from the skies in an effort to contain the blaze and stop the spread to nearby neighborhoods.
Embers were seen flying ahead of the main fire to catch onto buildings, with video capturing at least one residential building catching alight as of Wednesday evening.
But the ritzy Pacific Palisades neighborhood remains the worst-hit area.
Maria Shriver, a journalist and the former first lady of California when she was married to former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said the destruction in the upscale enclave was devastating.
’Everything is gone. Our neighborhood, our restaurants,’ she wrote on X on Wednesday. ’The firefighters have and are doing their best, but this fire is massive and out of control.’
The day after actor James Woods evacuated his house in Pacific Palisades, he said ’every house around us was on fire’.
’We were literally in the exact epicenter of the fire as it started,’ Woods, known for roles in ’Ghosts of Mississippi’ and ’Any Given Sunday’, said on CNN on Wednesday.
’There was so much chaos. It was like an inferno.’
Stars shared their grief, praised firefighters and encouraged those threatened to evacuate on social media.
Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis said ’my community and possibly my home is on fire’.
’It is a terrifying situation,’ Curtis wrote on Instagram. ’Pray if you believe in it and even if you don’t, pray for those who do.’
Mandy Moore, known for television series ’This is Us’, said she and her family had evacuated because of the proximity of the flames.
’So gutted for the destruction and loss,’ she wrote on Instagram. ’Don’t know if our place made it.’
Media personality Paris Hilton’s beachfront mansion in Malibu, reportedly bought for $8.4 million, was among the homes burned down.
She said she was ’heartbroken beyond words’.
’Sitting with my family, watching the news, and seeing our home in Malibu burn to the ground on live TV is something no one should ever have to experience,’ Hilton wrote on X.
Several other fires were burning around the city. Film permits were revoked in Pasadena and other areas east of Los Angeles at the request of fire officials, according to permitting organization FilmLA.
Production of TV shows including ’Jimmy Kimmel Live’ and ’Grey’s Anatomy’ was halted on Wednesday. Several film premieres were also called off.
Actor Mark Hamill, known for playing Luke Skywalker in the ’Star Wars’ films, said the blaze was the ’most horrific’ since 1993.
He said on Instagram that he evacuated his Malibu home on Tuesday evening with his wife and dog.
’There (were) small fires on both sides of the road as we approached (the Pacific Coast Highway),’ he said.
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