Los Angeles wildfires: At least 10 dead, Communities Smashed as Victims Evacuate
By Chizoba Njaka
At least 10 people have died, as several major wildlife continued to burn in Los Angeles County.
According to CNN report, officials have warned that the actual toll would remain unclear until it's safe for investigators to access neighborhoods adding that tens of thousands of people have been impacted by evacuation orders since the blazes began.
It noted that Firefighters has made progress as Santa Ana winds weakened, but gusts picked up across the region as the day went on.
Report revealed that officials have also launched a major response to a new fire near the border of LA and Ventura counties, which prompted evacuations revealing that Residents are contending with polluted air and other hazardous conditions.
It further exposed that almost 10,000 structures have been destroyed between the coastal Palisades Fire, which according to report is now the most destructive that has ever hitted Los Angeles County.
Meanwhile, as ongoing wildfires across Los Angeles rage on, residents staying at an evacuation shelter in Pasadena were wrapping their heads around the scale of their losses.
Among the evacuees who spoke to journalists was Mrs Kimiko Warner-Turner who expressed her pain over the ugly incidence said “just imagine if you go to the front door and behind it, it’s nothing, and you walk in and you have your car keys, but there’s no place to put it, and then there’s no place to lay your head, and you don’t have a blanket, a towel,” adding that the thought of rebuilding a new life is just too overwhelming.
Mrs Warner-Turner lamented, "We thought it was going to be our lifelong home, we thought we were never going to move, so I don’t know. … I haven’t been able to see it, or how long it will take or if we can afford to do that.”
Sharing her own ideal over the wildfire experience , Mrs Raya Reynaga, said, as the fire crept up to her historic home, she resisted leaving for a while, fearing what she would lose if she didn’t.
“I tried to save my house because that’s all I have. Everything I’ve ever worked on for my entire life was there,” she said, in tears.
Reynaga, who is a trained first responder, said she had to be physically removed from her property after four to five hours.
“My work equipment, my brother’s ashes, my daughter’s mementos, my keepsakes, my deceased mother’s photos and belongings that she passed down to me. It’s all I have,” she said. “I have nothing.”