the road it was only much later that she did to confront to the life of a shuddered by trauma. ice as life starts january 24th oh d w the this is dw news line from berlin, firefighters and los angeles. say they cannot contain multiple wildfires. a new boys is broken out in hollywood, triggering freshman accusation, orders, and threatening, iconic landmarks. the fires are burning out of control in multiple neighborhoods across the way. the . i'm aaron tilton, thanks for joining us. a new fire has erupt. it in hollywood,

in los angeles, brittany law, me a landmarks like the adobe theater moore. the oscar ceremony is held. authorities have ordered evacuations for the area firefighters have been unable to contain blazes. region in several parts of los angeles. the official death tool has reach 5 people and more than a 1000 buildings have been destroyed as the home after home, consumed by flames. fierce winds up in 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. home neighborhoods or beans generated. some residents have been returning to the charred rulings of their former homes. the

year was our home with my sisters, and we'd lost practically everything, but the flames have consumed years of dreams here. everything here has turned to ashes 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 eating fires neighboring states are sending resources to help. the president biden promised a strong federal response as he met with california. as governor and other top state officials, the the

more than a 100000 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 reporters to from simon's is on the scene in los angeles. he joins us now. so stuff on you've been on the ground reporting for hours from different locations. where exactly are you now? now we got a staging ground for a law enforcement and to the law says fire department at the palest satisfy. this is the biggest fire of 15000, almost 16000 acres, consume. you can see it, it is easy actually. now on your left here, up the hills. everything is consumed there. nothing is left there, complete destruction. the spot fires right and left. they are still which firefighters have to put out and on your right is basically the ocean. so we're

riding this in the, on this postal highway here. and this is where a firefighter stage ready to actually combat that fire. it has not been tech codes very efficiently. in the last $24.00, almost 48 hours. why? because the wind, the sand in a wind, and they picking up right now quite substantially. and that makes it really hard for helicopters and for fix a wing plains airplanes to drop fire retardant, and water in a significant amount to dallas the fire. so that's the problem here. now we have $66.00 major fires in and around l a. the latest is the sunset fire and the hollywood hills close to a very, very, very, populated area. so i would expect that some of the assets which are stage to you will now actually move towards hollywood hills and to tackle the sunset fight to prevent this from spreading and really endangering hundreds, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of residents there. and you're right,

immigration orders growing 130000 people under recreation orders right now. and there is one thing to say l a and the a fire department here as well as cal far california fire. they try and really the best, but they have no way are handling all those fires you. they're completely overwhelmed actually don't. as you were seeing their stuff on more fires are starting all the time. do we have any indication of how bad things could get? well i look as, as soon as the wind picks up, the more winds stronger the wind, the more fire danger, the bigger and faster can those fires grow and that is many can do nothing if you have. so it's like aerial assets, but you can't employees and deploy them, can put the helicopters in the air, you can just when the fire fight or a fight against fire, with boots on the ground with hot shots, groups, and, and, and firefighters galore at that is not reasonable and of course those professionals

here, they know that so they have in many ways no other chance the letting the fires do their thing, burn structures to the grounds which is horrible for those people who lose their houses and holes and everything is in flames. you like churches, synagogues, templates is that brought everything businesses, structural damage here is really, really events. and we're seeing images of some of the structure fires right now. now officials say some of the fires are 0 or pretend contained. how exactly do they plan to bring these fires under control? that's a very good question. i think they really don't have an answer on this or this whole thing is that the wins are dying down. the center i know wins which $48.00 or 24 hours ago came down the, the, the hills here with a 100 miles per hour as tornado strings. now they're at 3040 miles an hour and they're picking up. and that is a problem. if the winds died down,

the firefighters have a good chance because you can get those airplanes and helicopters into it and really make a dent into those fires if that's not working. and if i start tearing up nights because the smoke is really sick, even if you can see it, it really bites in your eyes and even in your long c a. but you see that's the reality. it's like it's not getting better at all at the moment. it's maybe not getting very much worse from what was yesterday or 24 hours ago. but it's also not getting better. and i don't see any clear path for the fire department yet, or who walks on how to fight this 6 major fires in and around all day. okay, that was dw stuff from simon's in los angeles. thank you for your reporting and please stay safe. i'm joined now by john hines in west loot and alta, dina since 2003 and was forced to evacuate 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 fill on 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 of the 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 the fires are continuing. and so this is actually, the problem is that many, many 5 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, uh, it 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? you know, it was very quickly the police were coming through because of the um, were very used to fires in california. and when there are a 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 realized 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, there's 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, 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 they've 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. no, this may be a sensitive question, but you know what's left of your home hasn't survived the place. um, so where my kids live, we're 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 survived or not. all right, that was john henson. thank you very much for talking to us and we wish you all the best. remember little a new journal just method to put she has more on the cause of these fires. we believe it's work one of the kind of human cause fire simply by whether 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 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? it's, 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 like because it's easier for the fire to run 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. and 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 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 events and the landscapes of tinderbox, you get big time fires like this that are more typical of big 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 a shroud of toxic air. a 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 windshield backed 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 celebrate is 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 pushing. thanks for your analysis. and you're up to date. thanks for joining us. the . the innovation green, the green revolution global. so listen to a whole lot of crime. it's probably up to speed is secure, subscribed to those channels. we've got new videos every friday. subscribe to plan . it's a good .