foot soldiers among the success of the fights for the rest of the world. usa device of the altar rise starts january 18th on dw, the . this is indeed the news line from berlin, firefighters and los angeles, say they cannot contain multiple wild fires. tens of thousands up in order to flee different neighborhoods across the l. a. area as hundreds of homes are and go find the flames. the, i'm in dolton berlin, welcome to the program firefighters in los angeles are unable to contain wildfires raging in several parts of the city. the official desk toll has no reason to 5,

with many more injured, more than a 1000 buildings have already been destroyed and the largest blaze, making it one of the most destructive fires ever in california history. home after home, consumed by flames. fierce winds up and propelling the inferno here and all to dina, controlling the places has been near impossible. i've lived in this area for over 20 years and we've seen fires in the mountains in the hills, but never anything like this. whole neighborhoods are being incinerated. some residents have been returning to the chart ruins of their former homes a year with our home, with my sister, and we've lost practically everything, but the flames have consumed in years of dreams. here. everything here has turned

to ashes the from the air, a wider view of the scale of a disaster. smoke stretching off for hundreds of kilometers from space. satellite imagery captured the 2 biggest places. the palisades and even fires neighboring states are sending resources to help. president biden promised a strong federal response as he met with california as governor and other top state officials. the eighty's fire struck the more than a $100000.00 people are under evacuation orders for customers. they commer wins,

could help fire fighting efforts in the coming days. but as the blazes rage out of control, the extreme risk to life and property will remain dw reporter step. and simon says at the scene in los angeles, i asked him to describe the devastation he was seen. well, um, they're not far off with characterizing dallas, and what we see here is set up a color pick, you know, but the truth is maybe not the color pink, but massive destruction is here on display, on every corner. your turn right behind me. if you see here, this wire crew is trying to really extinguish the last flames of what destroyed a jewish temple here in pasadena. it's completely gone, a complete loss. and if you look around, maybe i can, i could do this, see all the houses and other properties here on this compound, completely gone. if you look up there, into the mountains,

there is where the fire came from and this is the e to before air. that's basically to the right of the pasadena of the, i'm sorry, of the police said heights fire i'm, they're both are still growing. the winds up picking up a little bit. this fire here, it consumed 10600 acres. and there is hundreds of firefighters employed here deployed, and of course, the mayor of l. a as well as the fire chief has said, it's all hands on deck because they really need everybody who has experience with fire fighting to be here or, and all those fires $34.00 in total with this 13 others to actually tackle those flames which come back their structure, so a get a place again of fire is jumping from one street to another one house. the spirits to others are completely destructed. then another one spared its completes if you will. chaos and complete chaotic destruction here. so in the face of all that,

destruction is really banks the question, how exactly did these fires spread so quickly of the well, that was a surprise. uh, it wasn't a surprise that we were supposed to have santa ana winds here. that was news from 3 days ago, but the worst based on what happens is maybe one or 2 brush wires and with moderate speed. now, those santana wins came here with a 100 miles per hour, tornado strings and down the hills, picking up the fire and really dropping it basically onto the outskirts of the city . kind of 5 tides, a year, ethan pasadena lp now and so on. so now we have 4 big fires and again, the speed and the ferocity of those fires was not what was expected. prepared for 2 does not make you the master off if yet for if you have to deal with for master fires. and as we can see behind you, firefighters are doing their best to contain the blazes at the same time,

officials are saying that they're 0 per 10 percent contained. so the question is, how bad could things get in the coming days? easily worse than it is now, and it's already really, really bad if the winds are picking up and ex thank goodness, as of now, this is not in the forecast. but if this is happening and firefighters cannot get a quick handle on growing fire still, then things can get even worse. maybe not here locally, where i am right now. but just let's say 2 miles this way or 2 months. that way anything can happen. windows winds pick up and of course, you know, the problem is when those winds pick up and when they are sustained the strong and then you can put any air assets into the air. know helicopters who dropped fire retardant or water or fixed wing plains which carry a lot of fire retired and the water and a really needed to put a dab on all those fires you otherwise this is free growing and just with ground

crews fire department l a fire department, california fly, a cow fi or hot sharp needs to all of the nation. even the president saying, hey, we're sending 2000 national guard to help you. you cannot do this with boots on the ground all. only you need to have all the assets at display at your fingertips and after the employ them if that's how possibly goes to weather is not playing along well then things can get easily worse here. right? that was dw reporter stuff on simon's in los angeles. many thanks for your reporting and to stay safe. i'm joined now by john hines and who has lived in all to dina since 2003, and was forced to evacuated from the fires. john, thank you very much for joining us. so we're going to bring up some pictures that you were able to film during your flight. can you actually walk us through what it was like when you fled from your home? sure, so last night when the fire started about dinner time, my son and i went out to the fire line, which was at a canyon very close to where we live and the fire burned through the evening. and i

went back to my home in the middle of the night, but in the morning when i woke up, i had now seen the devastation through the neighborhood. and this is a very historic neighborhood at the base of the san gabriel mountains in los angeles. these homes are well over a 100 years old. and so now you're seeing these hundreds of homes that are been devastated in the immediate area but, but to the fires are continuing. and so this is actually, the problem is that many, many fight homes are on fire. and because of the big wins that are ongoing, from the previous few days, it's jumping from house to house. and so it's still very, very dangerous. and so the evening was really going through the mountains which are at the, the front of the canyon, but now all of the homes are threatened. and so the wave is going from the west to the east because of the winds. and so i decided now that my home would be threatened and i came down to orange county to stay with relatives. now, can you walk us through what your thought process was? was it a warning from the authorities that made you to make the decision to leave, or was it what you were seeing happened to your neighbors homes?

i know it was very quickly, the police are coming through because of the wherever or use the fires in california. and when they're of threats, they want to get people out of the area as quickly as possible because they have to move a lot of equipment through. and that also the whole idea of, of, of if, if the airplanes were going to drop water, which they weren't able to do last night because of the high winds. so they were coming through 1st with cars and then later knocking on doors. and unfortunately, 5 people died in our neighborhood, mostly because they didn't leave. and by the time they realize their house was on fire, they were overcome by smoke. now you've said you're used to fires in california, but we've been hearing from many people we've been talking to that they have reached an unprecedented level. do you agree with that assessment? well we had, we had a, we had a, a huge fire in 2009 that took out 800000 acres. this area, this 1st very significant because of the homes that are being affected, where we particularly are in all to dina is,

is really interesting because we're adjacent to the nasa jet propulsion lab. so that's a government facility, and so the, the military will do whatever they can to make sure a fire doesn't happen. and out in the mountains above us is the mount wilson observatory, which are some of the most advanced telescopes on the earth. so very often when they're in fires in the past, they have a lab, they bring a lot of resources to, to bear. but now in this case, because it got down to where the homes are, they just weren't prepared for it. maybe even brought in fire people from arizona to help fight the spires. now this may be a sensitive question, but you know, what's left of your home hasn't survived the place. um, so uh where my kids live were trying to figure out if they survived to the house of the building adjacent to them was destroyed this morning. and my house is in the line of where the fire is coming and i have not heard yet. i'm. i'm hoping i'll know by tomorrow morning if it start either not. all right, that was john henson. thank you very much for talking to us,

and we wish you all the best. remember, look, i thank you, bill duncan i asked me to relatives matthew, a couple of cheap, what we knew about the cause of these fires and the rapids spread. we believe it's work one of the kind of human cause fire simply by whether it be in a backyard barbecue accent or something like that. we don't necessarily know the exact cause yet, but we do know that given the conditions they were able to spread exponentially. now one has been toppled in the past 24 hours. the policy expire is now over $5000.00 hector's and continuing to grow and the weather for is making it even worse. get this the humidity there right now. one percent the atmosphere is sucking any moisture out of the ground desiccated the landscape and making it easier for these buyers to burn. in addition to very strong winds, burbank had a gas to a 130 kilometers per hour their strongest on record. they've never seen a gust over one o 7. and so when you factor in extreme wins, extremely dry air. hot temperatures and

a lack of recent rainfall is no surprise. we're getting such the high end and potentially deadly events. while yes, as you were saying there, the weather does seem to be exacerbating these fire conditions. and of course, january is not a typical time of year for wild fires, but the region is also no stranger to large scale fires. so the question is, could the scale of damage have been prevented in any way? so it's really tricky to say, i think in this case it's simply a matter of an expanding footprint in southern california. fires are part of the landscape fires a part of the ecosystem. it happens every few years. but when you start building bigger and bigger and bigger cities, you're going to have more potential for damage, loss and casualties. in this case however, you have very densely packed in neighborhoods with no real brakes for fire to stop that. and so in situations live because it's easier for the fire to run it all the way down to the foothills and potentially to the ocean until this was either contained or birth of the ocean. i don't really see much of an end inside. even there aren't really many natural barriers here. one other point, you know,

you mentioned moments ago, the january is not typically when we see these fires, you're exactly right. we ordinarily would see them until about maybe october or november by which point the winter range would start to arrive and come december fire season should be over. that's not really the case. we. we just haven't really seen any arrival of the winter rains. it's been so incredibly dry over the past few months. we've seen less than a quarter of the typical rainfall. and so in the winter time, when we get the strong wind advance and the landscapes of tinderbox, you get big time fires like this that are more typical of the fire season. now beyond the immediate danger, what health issues do fires of this size present? air quality is big time, in fact, the worst air quality anywhere in the western hemisphere is in the los angeles metro areas which keep in mind that's the 2nd biggest city in united states. so you have 4000000 people underneath this route of toxic air or for anyone in the area right now i recommend shutting. the window is making sure your ac is and your, your heating units are such that you don't have to worry about any outside air

being ingested because it really is toxic. and so that's a huge concern there as well. not just for the populations, you know, showing the only those with respiratory issues, but for the entire population, the air is hazardous. all right, so the question of the hour is, is there any relief in sight with the weather forecast help firefighters contain these blazes as well? i'm optimistic that thursday the wind should back off a little bit so there won't be as much of spreading that said that doesn't really help to find buyers that are already ongoing right now. thursday, we'll have another batch of very dry air move in and then come friday. another round of the santa ana winds when the air is pushed down, the hills and heaps of dr. ethics celebrates causing strong winds. that's exactly what we'll see friday into the weekend. so really at things briefly get better, but we'll get worse this weekend and now that we already have fires going, all it takes is a little spark, a little ember from one of the extra fires to spark a new one that's already happened. we're up to 5 fires now and,

and i dare say we'll have more coming. and these next few days. all right, i'm afraid we have to leave it there. that was me, dural just matthew to pushing. thanks for your analysis. look that you're up to date up next on business. china faces a backlash over a new mega port is built in for an air until berlin, thanks for watching the people in trucks engine trying to feed the city center. the straight pieces explain the around the world more than 150000000 people of.