los angeles is america's biggest city on the west coast, and people here are used to wildfires. they've destroyed homes and businesses time and time again, but no—one could have predicted the scale of the tragedy about to unfold when news first broke of one fire in one community. sirens wail. you can see they are dropping water. theyjust — rhere you go. you can see it happen right there. and there are some hand crews on the ground. sirens wail. would you mind talking to us for a second? yeah, no problem. 0k, what's your name?

charles. charles, have you been evacuated from the area or not yet? not yet, and we have seen that before. so, nothing new to us for the last 32 years that i've been here. within hours, things are getting serious. residents can scarcely believe their eyes. fires were this close to the cars. people left their cars on palisades drive. burning up the hillside, the palm trees — everything's going. what happened? there's a lot - of fire right there. that's why the people are coming. - we leave the car. and they said to get out of your car? 0k. it's just so sad, and i feel for everyone that's lost property in fires. i've never been this close to it. driving down the canyon was really very shattering. huge smoke plumes can be seen rising above - the pacific palisades area - of the city, and residents have

been issued with - an evacuation order. i got within 300 yards of my house and some gentleman picked me up and took me the rest of the way. we saw some literally flaming debris landed in the road near where we were standing. so, it seemed to be, "let's get out of here". whatever i lose, i lose, and there's nothing i can do about it. all the way down towards the ocean, just pockets of flame and fire and smoke and they have it under control. we've been told that we should be safe. my husband and i and family will not be evacuating right now. we're going to ride it out. and it's really amazing to watch these incredible, heroic individuals take care of what mother nature puts in front of us. i want to let all of the viewers and listeners know that we are not out of danger.

the national weather service has predicted that the winds are going to pick up and get worse. we're gonna have the most significant wind event between 10pm this evening and 5am tomorrow morning so it's incumbent that everybody have a wildfire action plan for their home if they live in a brush—covered area. please take this wind - emergency very seriously. as you heard from the speakers before me, this is something i that is going to get worse throughout the night, - so we all have to look out for each other. i the fire broke out around 10:30 in the morning in the pacific palisades neighbourhood. it's an upscale area between santa monica and malibu, home to many famous residents. sitting here and waiting to find out whether we're going to be evacuated or not is... mummy! it's like the time can't go by any slower. yes, baby. come here, bubba. mummy!

so, instead, we decided to pass the time by putting together bags of clothes for our friends who have lost everything. i have never seen flames from my house like this. ever. this is insanity. i hope everyone is staying safe tonight. lots of love, lots of prayers.

our community is beyond devastated. we are all pulling together. a lot of my friends have lost their home. i'm waiting to see if... ..our home will be there. right now, it's just — it's just a waiting game. among the buildings threatened, the world—famous getty museum with a4,000 artefacts. i have the waves crashing in front of me here on pch and i have the flames behind me here on the hill after coming off at temescal canyon where embers were being blown around, as you saw. the high school caught fire, homes burning on either side, and that fire over the last few hours just — i mean, look at the gusts. gusts right now.

it's literally pushing — it's blowing south, so it is just throwing these flames over these hills and through these canyons. pips. the headlines — 30,000 people have been ordered to evacuate their homes _ because of a wildfire which is i tearing through wealthy suburbs of los angeles. it's like a ghost town. everybody's abandoned this place, as you can imagine, i and the fires are. still smouldering. people would normallyj be driving up and down here with surfboards on top of their cars, | ready to enjoy a day - at the beach but right now, it just looks like some sort of apocalypse. i there's not enough structure protection in here to really try and save all of these homes. it's really going to be a struggle. this is heartbreaking — i feel for these people — and it's just sad to watch

all these homes go up. this was just a little antiques shop, a pizza place. these places have been here forever — ever since i've been alive. i really thought my shop was gone. - it's still here right now. i don't know if it'll make it or not. i there's a lot of people who don't have insurance orfire insurance. i know that's difficult in this area, especially if you're in the fire zone, and i feel horrible for them. i tell you, i've been here 47 years. i grew up on this block. i saw the other altadena fires and it was nothing like this. nothing like this. my son left the house before us on foot. - he doesn't have a cellphone or anything like that, - so i'm searching for him now. i'm looking for him. we got a phone call from a neighbour, saying that our house was on fire and we knew that there were no fire trucks in the area, so we thought we would come up and see if we could get in the area. i keep going from not crying to now starting to cry again because i know a lot of these people and they've lost everything, so it's pretty surreal to see all this.

five minutes ago, i was sitting | in the car by myself and ijust| — the tearsjust came over my face, so... l my entire history is in the house. i we did take all of ourfamily pictures and a few valuable paintings out last night so, you know, all the stuff that's here is replaceable, people are not, so... very lucky. so, having the family is the most important thing. i'm going to break down again. that's what i — i that's what i feel. it's my whole life. everything was in there. so... we've lost everything. you shape up. you're supposed to be a support! | chuckles. anyway...

you scared? i'll be ok. mum-- and we'll start over. even though i'm 91 years old, i'll start over again. _ the fire continues to grow with 0% containment. all 29 fire departments in our county are not prepared for this type of widespread disaster. the difference with this is that we've had these huge 50—80mph winds, and it's still windy, and so it didn't matter where the fire started yesterday but the embers flew everywhere. you're walking around | room to room, looking for what you cannot part with. maybe it's a photograph, maybe it's a necklace - that my wife remembers her mom giving her, - and everything else, - you're saying, "i can't take "you with me. "i may never see you again." i mean, it's that part you can't get over. . that'sjust...tough.

really hard. we're here at the heart of the pacific palisades in a neighbourhood that is a total loss. we've got a home here. i'm going to flip over here. another home lost. when we go over this way, homes down this street gone. this one completely levelled. the firefighters here, they're not trying to save these structures — they're trying to prevent these flames from jumping to other neighbourhoods. you see all these embers? in some cases, they're being carried more than a mile in advance of these source flames, lighting other homes on fire. let's go back to emma vardy now. and emma, this area is no stranger to wildfires but nothing could have prepared them for this. what makes this so different. is that there are so many fires burning at once, and they're i burning so close to residential areas. now, emergency crews - on the ground have admitted theyjust don't have enough people to deal with this - developing situation, i and some of those fires are still growing in size.

the hillsides are still burning behind us and every time - the winds blow, there's a gust of wind, we're just seeing - flames up on the hillsidel there burst back into life. a reminder of how unpredictable this fire is and how much - the winds have been driving it and making life so difficult. i we have also been hearingl about some serious injuries to residents who did not evacuate their homes, l choosing to stay behind for various reasons - to try and protect their homes, or simply leaving it too late. i so, emergency services - are continuing to warn people to take evacuation orders very seriously because this is a day like los angeles has not seenl before, and it's not even close to being over yet. voiceover: this is cbs news on the hour. - the southern california wildfires are not only some of the most destructive

in state history, they've turned deadly — at least five lives now reported lost. overnight, destruction continued. 15,000 buildings had been burned and 100,000 people had been forced from their homes. firefighters were overwhelmed and there were increasing reports of looting. so, if i very quickly take my mask off, the air is absolutely thick with smoke. the fire crews here tell us they have a shortage of water and, in many instances, they're having to stand and watch these properties burn. it is a losing battle. i never thought it would come through here. david was hoping his home might�*ve survived but the whole neighbourhood has gone — and with it, his house, too.

i would've thought i'd be seeing more planes flying over with water — i mean, there appears to have beenjust two. i mean, in california, are there not, like, 20 or 30 of them that could've got to you already? i would've thought the firemen would, like, take a stand on a certain area. maybe they did and i'm just not seeing it, but... mayor, la countyl is in a panic state. it began two days ago. with the palisades fire. my crew and i arrived i shortly after it started and for several hours, _ we watched as hundreds of homes in a neighbourhood i burned to the ground. we did not see - a single fire engine. there was fear and there was a lot of confusion. . you were out of the| country at the time. my question to you is. what explains this lack of preparation - and rapid response? let me just say first and foremost, my number one focus — and i think the focus

of all of us here, with one voice — is that we have to protect lives, we have to save lives, and we have to save homes. rest assured that... but that did not happen. rest assured — let me finish — rest assured when that is done, when we are safe, when lives have been saved and homes have been saved, we will absolutely do an evaluation to look at what worked, what didn't work and to correct or to hold accountable any body, department, individual, etc. but my focus right now is on the lives and on the homes. do you think your leadership . was effective while responding to this disaster? ijust said what i believe is the most important thing for us to do right now and that is going to continue to be my focus. thank you. from pacific palisades, the fire spread across more than 17,000 acres, making it one of the biggest natural disasters in the history

of los angeles. five separate fires were now burning. the palisades and hurst fires were almost completely uncontained. we've just been evacuated. we've just been evacuated from this good samaritan�*s car. you got it, dad. moving out vulnerable residents was proving far from easy. there's a fire right outside our car. we've got to... no, not that way, dad! dad! my father—in—law has parkinson's. he can barely move. this was a heroic effort on his part. very wobbly. which way do i go out? this way, dad — to the sidewalk. let me get something for you. i went outside, i saw smoke and fire near my father—in—law�*s house and realised we need to go. the problem is, we didn't have a car. i ran up and down the street where he was, glenhaven, finally found a neighbour who was willing to swing by and pick us up — most people had already gone at that point — and at that point, i grabbed his medicine —

that's the only thing i could think to grab. turn around, dad, we got this. and at that point, we jumped in his car, this guyjeff — a neighbour we'd never met before but, you know, salt of the earth, saved our lives. as we're driving down, there's fires on both sides of the car. we're driving, we're suddenly seeing fires, you could feel the heat. and then, the fires were getting closer and closer. and at that point, just being stuck there, surrounded by fire, the policemen started running up the street, "get out of the car!" the authorities in los angeles have issued a powerful warning against looting and other criminal activity in areas abandoned by people fleeing wildfires. ten people are known to have died but officials expect this numberto rise. on day four of the disaster, tens of thousands of acres have been destroyed. residents are asking why help wasn't coming more quickly.

there's just not enough crews, you know, enough people. what i think, i think we're undermanned. i think that budgets have been cut. we actually came to say thank you to our house for being good to us, and we were good to it, so... radio chatter. despite days of hard work, it's up here in the hills where the fires are still raging, and with the winds picking up once again, there's realfears about its spread. and they're facing an uphill battle to try to contain it. well, as thousands of firefighters continue that battle to get this crisis under control, this is what it leaves in its wake. the suburb of altadena sits at the foot of a mountain range over which the unusually strong winds for this time

of year — the santa ana winds, they call them — poured in on tuesday night, and it's that that really lies at the heart of this disaster. the santa ana windsl have had two effects. once you get the fire going, well, it's already started, i but the santa ana winds add in extra dry air. - that sucks out all the moisture that's already there _ in the plants, so it - dries them out quicker, so it's actually adding more fuel and then, the speed i helps the spread. if you think you can have wind speeds, basically— hurricane—force wind speeds blowing with a fire in place, | it will push that flame, - that boundary of the fire over huge areas in such. a short space of time and that is what we've seenl in la over the last few days. there's much debate about the emergency response. were the authorities prepared for such a calamity? but there's also another question people are asking — is the changing climate partly to blame for all the devastation?

so, what the climate scientists say is that the temperature is getting hotter, that's making things drier. you've got extended heatwaves which draw moisture out of the soil and out of the vegetation, so you've got more dry vegetation so when a fire starts, there's more fuel to keep that fire going and it's likely to burn longer and burn a larger area. the national oceanographic and atmospheric administration did a paper looking at the relationship between temperature increase and wildfires. they found that climate change had caused an almost 200% increase, so almost doubled the area burned by wildfires since the 1970s. people are saying now $150 billion — the most expensive fire in us history and presumably in world history. so, as a climatejournalist, you look at this and you say this is one of those kind of key events in the history of our —

the whole planet's understanding of the potential impacts of climate change. it wasn't just the wind and flames the emergency crews were battling — there was the risk of looting, so the authorities introduced curfews. if you violate the curfew, you will be arrested and then, you will be prosecuted by the district attorney's office. looting is a despicable crime. for the people who have already been arrested, please know this is not going to end well. you will be punished to the full extent of the law and i'm sending this warning message out again. if you want to take — and go ahead and take advantage of people who have tragically suffered enormous losses in this county, the district attorney's office, working with law enforcement, will make sure you are arrested, you are prosecuted, and you are maximally punished.

we're just letting everybody know where we're at. we're taking donations, any types. there's anything from kids' supplies, pet supplies, food — anything you could think of that we could help you with. there was a lady here offering housing for people that have lost homes. we're just trying to help in any way possible in a hard time like this. i came here - because i'm in need. i lost my house — i my childhood home. it'sjust devastating. this is crazy. the city i grew up in is gone. we wanted to see if we could get water because that was the — that's the mostly thing that we're worried about, the water. you know, we need water. prince harry and his wife meghan have been meeting some of the first responders and victims of the fires at a world central kitchen site where food is being

distributed. the couple spoke and, as you see, hugged some of the people who'd been affected by the eaton fire. it's believed that they had already contributed clothing, children's items and other essential supplies. the governor of california has called for an independent- investigation into whether water shortages hinderedl efforts to control- the wildfires that have devastated parts of los angeles. i firefighters are still trying to contain the blazes. - radio: beautiful drop. by saturday, six fires were burning. poor air quality caused by billowing ash and smoke prompted the authorities to declare a local health emergency. the number of dead climbed to 11. well, we're standing overlooking mandeville canyon.

this is the scene of the latest intense battle to control these fires. you can see the helicopters going in with their payloads of water — thousands of gallons being dropped every run — and they've been doing this all through the night last night and then again all through the day today. there's another one coming over here. this appears to be one of the firehawk helicopters, and they have multiple helicopters working on the area. you can see there, a water drop on this particular home. i'm a little bit surprised to see that because the home was pretty much going up in flames already, so i'm surprised, but they are probably doing that to cool the fire down and to stop it from spreading a little bit further. just wave after wave, throwing everything they've got at the fire in the hope, of course, of trying to stop it reaching those houses down there, the houses here on the ridge and further into the city of los angeles.

determining the cause. of these fires is critical, and to that end, mayor bass, chief crowley and i are - announcing, in conjunction with our partner agencies, | the creation of the los angeles | regional wildfire investigative| task force. this task force is made up of local, state and federalj partners, designed to- investigate the cause of these fires and to see if there - is any connection between them. it is still an extremely active and fluid investigation. not only do i have assigned detectives working on the multiple fires but we are working in collaboration with la county fire, la city fire, the los angeles police department, the fbi and the atf. at least 16 people have died since tuesday and about a dozen others are missing. four large fires are still burning and officials say that the threat will remain high until wednesday because of strong winds.

to all la county residents, . please be assured that we will continue to battle these wildfires from the air i and on the ground until they are fully contained. - we stand alongside all- of you as we begin repopulation of evacuated areas, - establishment of disaster recovery centres and - the rebuilding of your homes, your communities and your lives. i watching the fires develop, sitting kind of awestruck, seeing this kind of vision of apocalypse in one of the greatest cities on earth, burning, it was a cataclysmic fire. california will be probably asking itself big questions. you can't stop or prevent wildfires as such, especially in the climate that california has. it will have to look into various ways to manage the potential and the ways they tackle the fires in the future, especially as it's becoming a growing threat on every month of

the year and over wider areas. the imagery of la has become black and white. you know, it's ash and charred, burnt material, and this sort of ghostly landscape that's emerged from a place we're all familiar with, because we've all seen the movies. we know what la looks like, we know the palm trees and the green grass. and now, you see this sort of really degraded, frankly terrifying, kind of shattered landscape. the people here will never forget these fires that ushered in the new year. and the scale of the tragedy, it's really difficult to overstate. yes, much of the physical damage to homes and businesses, that can be put right. but the lives of some have been changed forever with many people wondering, because the fire season is getting longer and longer, how are they going to cope next time?

live from singapore, this is bbc news. the israel—gaza ceasefire begins — three female hostages released by hamas see their family and friends after 15 months. in exchange, 90 palestinians have just been released from prisons in the israeli—occupied west bank. and donald trump tells a rally in washington he's going to repeal every executive order enacted byjoe biden within hours of taking office.

welcome to newsday, i'm katie silver. the long—awaited ceasefire in gaza has come into effect. after a delay, fighting stopped on sunday, and since then, displaced palestinians have been returning to the homes they had to flee during 15 months of war. lorries carrying vital aid are now flowing into the territory. in the past couple of hours, 90 palestinian prisoners have been released as part of the ceasefire deal. in tel aviv, crowds celebrated as three israeli hostages were released by hamas — handed over in dramatic scenes. among them 28—year—old emily damari — a british—israeli — who was reunited with her mother. and 24—year—old romi gonen and 31—year—old doron steinbrecher who were met by their mothers. the war was triggered by the hamas attack on israel on october 7 2023 —

which left over 1,200 people dead, mostly civilians, and saw 250 taken hostage.