Largest fire in Los Angeles' history burns on city's outskirts, homes evacuated

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Largest fire in Los Angeles' history burns on city's outskirts, homes evacuated

By Michael Idato
Updated

The city of Los Angeles is under siege from a bushfire which the city's mayor has described as the largest in its history.

The fire, which is burning in the La Tuna area in the north-east of the city, has consumed about 2000 hectares of brush in the San Fernando Valley's Verdugo Mountains.

By late on Saturday three homes had been lost and another 700 homes had been evacuated, roughly 550 of them from the Burbank and Glendale areas, which are adjacent to the fire.

The Burbank neighbourhood is also home to three of the city's biggest film studios, Universal, Warner Bros and Disney.

A plane makes a drop on a hillside in Sun Valley neighborhood, north of Los Angeles on Saturday

A plane makes a drop on a hillside in Sun Valley neighborhood, north of Los Angeles on SaturdayCredit: AP

Some 500 firefighters have been deployed to fight the fire.

The city's mayor, Eric Garcetti, confirmed today the fire is "the largest fire in the history of Los Angeles in terms of its acreage".

Pictures on social media documented some of the devastation.

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The devastating line of the fire has amplified in the last week by soaring temperatures as Los Angeles was hit by a powerful heatwave.

A crew with Cal Fire battles a brushfire on the hillside in Burbank, California, on Saturday.

A crew with Cal Fire battles a brushfire on the hillside in Burbank, California, on Saturday. Credit: AP

In parts of the city which would normally draw temperatures between 20 and 25 degrees at this time of year, the mercury has soared to 40 degrees and above.

The city's fire chief, Ralph Terrazas, said the biggest impact was "the weather and the wind".

Mayor Garcetti said he had "great confidence" the fire could be contained so long as the wind subsides; as of the weekend it had mostly done so.

The city's officials would have to reassess that plan if the winds "just pick up and go wild," he said.

The fire is just one of 29 which are currently burning in California.

It also comes as the state has deployed "a lot of resources" to another US disaster, the city of Houston, which is struggling to respond to devastating floods in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

Authorities warned of erratic winds that could force them to widen the evacuation zone, after the fire destroyed three houses in Los Angeles on Saturday.

The blaze in thick brush that has not burned in decades was slowly creeping down a rugged hillside on Saturday toward houses, with temperatures in the area approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), the Los Angeles Fire Department said in an alert.

The fire could make air unhealthy to breathe in parts of Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest city, and nearby suburbs, the South Coast Air Quality Management District said in an advisory.

Video posted online by media showed the fire burning along the 210 Freeway when it broke out on Friday, with smoke hovering over the roadway as cars passed by flames a few dozen feet away. Officials quickly closed a stretch of the freeway.

More than 644 km to the north, the so-called Ponderosa Fire has burned about 1570 hectares, and destroyed 32 homes in Butte County since it broke out on Tuesday. It prompted authorities to issue evacuation orders earlier this week to residents of some 500 homes.

California Governor Jerry Brown issued an emergency declaration on Friday to free up additional resources to battle the Ponderosa blaze.

with wires

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