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a raymond james financial advisor gets to know you, your passions and the way you enrich your community. life well planned. nicole: at bdo i feel like a true individual, people value me for me, they care about what i want, my needs, my career path, i matter here. announcer: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation, pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. announcer: and now, "bbc news" >> hello. i mended a vive. you are watching "the context" on bbc news. >> there are four fires burning and zero containment so still very dangerous for los angeles. >> these fires are stretching

the capacity of emergency services to their maximum limits. >> the scope and scale of the loss is just absolutely devastating. annita: tonight, fire cheese in los angeles more and there is no way they can contain the largest of the blazes in the city. emergency services are stretched to their limits. we will hear from some of those who have been evacuated. plus, european leaders react to controversial comments from president-elect donald greenland. and a new study shedding light on the potential power on a glass of milk. the chief of the los angeles fire department says emergency services are stretched to the absolute limit as they battle the four huge wildfires.

kristin crowley is warning all residents are in danger as strong winds drive the flames and in some cases burning through an area equivalent of five football pitches in just one minute. >> together these fires are stretching the capacity of emergency services to their maximum limits. a los angeles city fire department is battling these two major fires while also maintaining and want to focus on this as well 911 services for the city's approximate 4 million residents. despite the severity of the conditions, our department remains fully committed to safeguarding life and property. annita: right now, emergency services say their focus is on evacuation. tens of thousands of people have already been told to leave their homes or have been warned they may have to evacuate. two people have been killed and dozens more injured. the fire in the upscale pacific

palisades neighborhood home to many celebrities has spread to more than 3000 acres. a fire above altadena is growing. 50 acres are burning in the hurst fire where a mandatory evacuation order is in place for the sylmar suburbs. and a fourth smaller blaze has been reported in southern california, as well as in the last couple of hours, another fire broken out in woodlake. let's speak to caitlin along with their grandparents, animals, including her giant tortoise, were forced to evacuate due to the fires. really pleased to hear that you are safe but i'm sure that you have gone through a really traumatic few hours. first of all, i have to ask, giant tortoise, not easy to evacuate one of those. >> no. of course we have an evacuation plan living in a fire zone but actually following through with the evacuation plan, that is a different story.

it has been insane. we have gotten very lucky so far that he is as happy as can be. but we have a full house over here. annita: you have quite the social media profile the two of you. take us through that story from the point at which you heard about the fires and through that whole process of having to evacuate. >> a little bit about my family, we are fifth generation palisadians, one of the first families to ever live in the palisades and settled there. palisades is really our home community. my grandfather owns the property where the hardware is, grocery store. very community driven people. my mom called me at 10:30 in the morning freaking out because she was not at home and saw smoke. got in the car and drove up there. the last time we had a fire you could not get in our out. i got up there first thing.

we sat on the patio of the house for 3, 4 hours just watching the smoke but the fire was going the opposite direction. so it wasn't a lot of water coming on the other's id either, so we were not too worried about it. fire is fire. but wow, that changed very quickly. we started to get worried around 3:00, 4:00, got tiptoe out of there and got him down to the 800 block. we were closer to the trees and everything. once we got him out, we could get our grandparents out of their house but that is always a challenging thing to do when you love the home. so we got them out of the house. down to my own house in the marina, which is about 20 minutes away. got him unloaded. the fire started to get worse

and there were no fire trucks in our neighborhood. no emergency vehicles. naturally, my family, they are here to save the house, so grandpa had a hose, boyfriend, dad had a hose, mom had a hose on the roof when we arrived. sunlight was supposed to be there but pitch black. it took about one hour or so before i started to get a little bit too nervous and had to get my grandfather out of there. he is 84 years old. he was literally saving his house as much as he could. incredible man. we got him out. my dad, boyfriend, and brother stayed until about 10:00 p.m. when the fire reached the bush in our backyard. at that point, boyfriend said it is time to go. annita: that is where you had to

call it, they have to call it. ultimately it is life over property, as much as that property clearly means so much to you all. just talk to us about that point where they decided they had to call it and leave the home to the flames. >> it was devastating. my dad has videos of our beautiful pink brick house in flames. we didn't bring anything. my mom doesn't even own a pair of socks. i want to say we were prepared but we were underprepared. we got the animals, family out, but what do you do? my poor mom, she is a collector. she grew up in the house across the street. we live across from our grandparents. she grew up on that street. everything she has, a stay-at-home mom, children's

artwork all over the walls. it is beyond devastating. i feel like everyone is still in a state of shock. we have six animals, 12 full grown adults in the living room. there is nothing to go back to you, not even a grocery store. there are no schools. what are we -- we are just figure it out. we got lucky with tiptoe, my landlord called this morning and had a group of people working on one of her properties. she canceled them there and sent them here and there is a new tiptoe house being built right now in the marina. annita: we love our pets, so it's important to make sure they are safe and well. caitlin, thank you so much for talking to us on bbc news. so sorry for what you and your family have had to go through, what you lost, but thank goodness you are well.

perhaps we can talk in a few days to see how things are with you. caitlin doran, thank you very much. >> thank you so much. annita: let's speak to our correspondent emma vardy in santa monica for us. i know that you have been in the smoke for hours now. tell us more about what the situation is like where you are. >> santa monica is one of the most famous parts of los angeles. some people may remember it from the barbie movie. look completely different today. the air is still very smoky here even though we have moved away from the pacific palisades area where the fires are still burning more fiercely. it is pretty deserted here. some people are out in it but even down here by the coast it is difficult to breathe. it tastes of smoke and you can barely see vary far into the

distance because the smoke has clouded the city, coastline, as well as further inland. we know the firefighters are trying to battle the fire. the forecast is the wind will hopefully drop off a bit this afternoon. you can still feel the breeze down here although it is not as intense as it was overnight. annita: i am going to interrupt you to say that we can hear the wind. it is buffeting you, obviously moving the trees behind you. throughout the day, we've been hearing about what a problem the wind is and how it is driving the flames. we can hear it loud and clear. >> i will try to shelter the microphone for you. i know how difficult it is listen to you when you have wind howling into a microphone. the palm trees have been swaying in the wind for 24 hours, and that is what is fanning the flames.

the reason why emergency services keep giving us updates, telling us there is zero containment at the moment. it is still a developing situation in lots of areas. more residents being evacuated as these fires are burning on multiple fronts. schools are being closed. tv shows are shut down for the day. the city is kind of in a state of shock really because many have experienced wildfires before but they have not seen so many happening so quickly with such a devastating combination of these hurricane force winds and the very dry wind that los angeles is experiencing. annita: stay safe, you and the crew. thank you very much, emma vardy in santa monica. that wind is very much a part of the story. joining us now is jacob robey, paramedic and captain with the los angeles fire department. appreciate the time. where are you and what is the

situation where you are? >> currently i'm at our unified command post just north of the palisades fire right now. we are in a little safer area from the smoke, so we can manage the incident. annita: you have been a firefighter for 20 years. how do these fires compared to anything you don't with before? >> in l.a., we are used to having brush fires this season. this fire specifically strikes me as something, what we call santa ana winds, which are our strong winds that come from the canyons and pushed down through the canyons to the ocean. that is very normal for us to have and we are used to increasing our resources, up staffing, being in a prepared posture as the l.a. fd in preparation of a wind event. this was something i never experienced before. where i am sitting right now at

pacific coast highway, which is where the ocean is, the wind and the fire have pushed all the way to pacific coast highway. in fact, turned around and then pushed back up the canyon. that is not something that happens on a regular basis during santa ana wind events. it adds an extra layer of complexity when you have hurricane force winds up to 100 mile-per-hour gusts pushing from the ocean up the canyon after it had already burned. annita: we heard that is stopping these firefighting planes from taking off and dumping the water strategically. on a ground level, how is the wind affecting your ability to do the job? >> first off, we are fortunate that around 7:00 this morning, we were able to get our air assets back up in the air. annita: that is a new line for us. we had heard the planes had not been able to get up. but they are getting up now in

the air? >> yes, the wind came down to a level where we could get our fixed wing aircraft, our large planes, heavy retardant droppers, get ahead of the fire and begin preparing to drop, dropping large volumes of retardant, so the fire would burn up to that point and hopefully prevent it from extending past that. we were able to get a significant number of air assets in the air this morning and we were fortunate the wind died down enough recently that we were able to get our helicopters, which are water dropping helicopters, to drop water directly onto the fire itself. the wind was low enough where they could be effective and all of our helicopters were able to provide safe water drops to protect all the lives and property that we are working on here. annita: is the top priority for you right now getting people to safety, making sure people who are supposed to evacuate are actually doing that? >> we are very fortunate that we

didn't know this wind event was coming. we did a lot of preparation. all the residents of los angeles were very aware. they were in a posture when they were ready to evacuate when needed. when the fire started early on, quickly we issued evacuation orders. almost everyone that we could see did heed those warnings and data evacuate along the pacific coast highway in a safe area. there has been traffic of course as you have seen, but we had them out of those areas into a safer area, making sure we can focus on protecting the lives of the people that were up there, protecting their property as well. annita: do you have access to enough water to fight the fire at the moment? we have heard some queries about that particular question. >> in the mountain areas, there are large water tanks that

we are augmenting to full capacity and preparation of this event. we are talking over a million gallons of water that was ready, goes through the water system to provide coverage for all the homes. there was a lot of water used in the system, a lot of areas that didn't have as much water pressure as we had hoped. our firefighters were able to adapt to the best of their ability to get water from other sources such as pond scum etc., do the best they could to put water on the fires they found. annita: briefly, how much sleep have you had in the past 24 hours? not much i imagine. >> not so much. we are just working to ensure we can protect everyone in the area, work on preserving all the life and property. hopefully, the wind will die down for us in the next day or two and we can get a handle on

the fire. annita: very best to you and your colleagues. stay safe and good luck with the very tough job that you are doing. that is captain jacob raabe the, paramedic and captain with the l.a. fire department. more from us on the fires in l.a. in just a moment. around the world and across the u.k., this is bbc news. ♪

annita: you are watching "the context." let's go straight back to los angeles where firefighters continue to battle a number of out-of-control blazes. these live pictures coming into us. you can see that huge cloud of smoke over one part of the city. the fires have been driven by a combination of strong winds and low humidity. so many homes destroyed in these fires, as firefighters try to do what they can to put out the blazes.

obviously as we heard from one captain in the l.a. fire department, the priority at the moment is making sure that people are getting to safety. let's take a closer look at the conditions and contributing factors. dr. daniel swain is a climate scientist with ucla and the university of california who specializes in extreme events like floods, droughts, and wildfires. dr. swain, good to have you with us. first question, why and how did these fires get so bad so quickly? >> thanks for having me. there is really a confluence of two key factors. one is the presence of very strong and dry hurricane force winds in portions of the los angeles basin and surrounding areas that have been affected by these fires over the past 24 hours, as well as exceptionally dry, anonymously so dry vegetation in the region. a record dry stuck to the rainy

season. it essentially has not rained in the los angeles area since last winter. strong winds this time of year are not unusual but they are typically. y preceded by some rainfall that mitigates the fire risk that this time around the record warmth and dryness in recent months has set the stage for the strong wind event to produce catastrophic wildfires. annita: the l.a. police chief says there has been nothing like this before as far as he was concerned with the winds. why are they so strong and sustained? >> the winds themselves are particularly extreme but this is the time of year when you would expect to see strong, dry wind in the l.a. area. i would agree that the combination of extraordinarily, record dry conditions with wind at this magnitude is getting close to being unprecedented in this region at this time of year, and we are seeing the results of what may be the

costliest wildfire on record, resulting from that confluence. it is often the case that the southern portion of california does see these land to see winds blowing and typically not associated with precipitation. so these are dry windstorms theis the time of year. the magnitude of this event is particularly high and the dryness leading up to the event is what stands out as being essentially record-breaking in this context. annita: flooding in california last winter, then that hot, dry summer. you mentioned a moment ago, atypical dry period running up to this. are we in a vicious cycle of flood and fire here, and if we are, what can be done to break that cycle? >> one of the things that we strongly expect to increase in a warming climate, particularly in

this part of the world but also elsewhere, is something that we call hydro climate whiplash. these increasingly wide swings between extremely wet and extremely dry conditions. that is true even in a place that historically had wide swings. those swings are becoming even wider. in this instance, it went from very, record went to now very dry in los angeles, part of what has contributed in fact to the severity of this crisis. the very wet conditions over the previous two years allowed for the abundant growth of grass and brush which is primarily burning in these fires, and the record warmth and dryness that has followed, dried all that vegetation out, in addition a biomass out to extremely dry levels before this wind event, setting the stage for what is currently unfolding. annita: dr. daniel swain, thanks for explaining that. we will be returning to our coverage of those huge fires in l.a. in the next few minutes.

politicians across europe and the united states have been reacting after u.s. president elect donald trump refused to rule out using military force to seize greenland which is controlled by denmark. trump reiterated his desire to make it a part of the united states. the u.s. secretary of state gave this reaction. >> the idea about greenland is obviously not a good one. more important, it is one that is not going to happen, so we shouldn't waste a lot of time talking about it. annita: joining us now on "the context," is the senior analyst from the woodrow wilson center of scholars. great to have you here. why has greenland been catapulted into the headlines the way that it has? >> thank you for having me. the interest in greenland is really focused around two things, and that is security and economics. though seem to be the two major

drivers of the trump administration's interest in that. i think there it is really important to understand the actual goals they have in mind for both of those objectives, and then to have an agnostic assessment of the best way to achieve those. annita: so the tree future question first. >> from the strategic standpoint, there is an interest as greenland is working to gain full sovereignty from the kingdom of denmark, to make sure that they are remaining treaty-bound and militarily connected to the united states. we are on a good track with that. i would say especially russia's full-scale invasion of ukraine in 2022 has really shown the limits of the ways that countries can receive support if they are not in the alliance. as greenland has been

considering its military future, they have been growing -- they are a member of nato, of course, a part of the kingdom of denmark. but now as of 2023, they actually have a nato envoy that is represented at nato alongside the kingdom of denmark's representative. annita: we know that there are a lot of interested parties in greenland because of global warming and the potential to tap into more of its resources. so that is another reason why the u.s. might be interested. just finally and briefly, how seriously do you take what president-elect trump is saying? >> i think this is kind of in line with his negotiating style where he tends to put the first idea out there as something very extreme, and then reels it back to a point where he can find an area of mutual agreement. i think, though, in

understanding that we are at an incredibly complex moment in time in terms of the international security environment, so threatening our nato allies, i do not think it is an appropriate or really ineffective way of going about that at this time. greenland has said they are open for business, not for sale. it's really important to build upon the very positive cooperation we have and the alliance to be advancing our mutual interests in a way that is conducive to peace. annita: thank you for your thoughts on that story tod announcer: funding for presentation of this program is provided by... financial services firm, raymond james. announcer: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation,

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