Los Angeles issues new evacuation orders as thickening smoke causes health emergency

The Palisades fire raging in the Los Angeles region shifted east on Friday night, triggering new evacuation orders and further aggravating the titanic health and safety emergency in America's second largest city.

Palisades is the largest of six simultaneous wildfires that have devastated Los Angeles County neighborhoods stretching across an area larger than San Francisco since Tuesday, killing at least 11 people and damaging or destroying around 12,000 structures. The numbers are expected to rise once it is safe enough for firefighters to conduct house-to-house searches.

The LA Department of Public Health said it had declared a local health emergency and issued a public health officer order in response “to the widespread impacts of the ongoing multiple critical fire events and windstorm conditions.” 

The statement further said that "the fires, coupled with strong winds, have severely degraded air quality by releasing hazardous smoke and particulate matter, posing immediate and long-term risks to public health."

Allegations of leadership failures and incompetence were flying, with Governor of California Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass singled out for opprobrium. 

Newsome ordered state officials to determine why a 117 million-gallon (440 million-liter) reservoir was out of service and some hydrants ran dry, calling it “deeply troubling.”

Los Angeles fire chief, Kristin Crowley, said city leadership failed her department by not providing sufficient funds for firefighting. She also pointed out the lack of water. “When a firefighter comes up to a hydrant, we expect there’s going to be water,” she said.