By Kayla Brogan
A group of hikers in Temescal Canyon may have been among the first to spot what could have been the beginning of the Palisades Fire, according to an interview with Backpacker. Their hike on the morning of Jan. 7 was abruptly halted by smoke and flames, as one of the hikers shared with AP. By later that day, the fire had carved a destructive path through parts of Southern California.
One of the hikers told AP, “I turned around and there was a plume of smoke rolling over the mountain right behind us.”
In a video shared with AP, Cranmore and his friends are seen running as a cloud of smoke forms in the distance.
Satellite imagery taken that morning at 10:37 a.m. local time by the European Space Agency shows a first glimpse of the devastating Palisades Fire.
The smoke was coming from an area directly east of the Los Angeles neighborhood, The Summit. The area has a number of hiking trails, including the Temescal Ridge Trail – the fire began burning right alongside it.
The wildfires burning in and around Los Angeles have razed neighborhoods, killed at least 27 people, and forced desperate evacuations. The two largest have become some of the most deadly and destructive blazes in California history.
For now, the answer to what caused one of Los Angeles’ most destructive firestorms may be elusive even to investigators, as the inferno rages on. One prediction is uneven aged management, which produces stratified levels. This means that fires can actually be beneficial to help reduce the impact of the next successive fire.
Fires help to clear bush and dead trees, which allows new trees to grow and keeps the next year’s fires in check. It culls the herd of the sick and old. However, LA’s efforts to contain every acre of the tiny fires actually make their successive fires have a greater impact on the environment.
On Sunday night, California Gov. Gavin Newsom clarified that the weather department has issued similar warnings four times in the last three months for Southern California. President Biden stated that he has instructed the administration “to respond promptly to any request for additional federal firefighting assistance.”
The National Weather Service issued a “serious” warning on Monday, stating that powerful Santa Ana winds are likely to return on Tuesday, making the situation worse for the administration. The weather service released the warning for Los Angeles County and nearby Ventura County, adding that the combination of powerful wind and low humidity can intensify the fire. They cautioned that wind gusts could reach 50 to 80 miles an hour.
The two persisting fires are the Palisades Fire, haunting the homes of Hollywood’s stars, and the Eaton Fire, leaving not a trace of substance in its path.
The largest is the Palisades Fire, along the Pacific Coast west of downtown, which as of Monday evening had scorched more than 23,700 acres and was 14 percent contained, according to Cal Fire. The fire has forced evacuations along the Pacific Coast Highway, including the homes of many celebrities in Pacific Palisades, Malibu, and Santa Monica.
The next largest fire is to the east: the Eaton Fire in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Pasadena. It has burned more than 14,000 acres and has reached 33 percent containment.
The Palisades Fire has destroyed about 5,000 structures and the Eaton Fire roughly 7,000 structures.
Emergency evacuations have also taken effect within college campuses, including Pepperdine University along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu and the University of California, Los Angeles, located in downtown LA. In-person classes will be reevaluated for safety by the end of the week.
Twenty-seven people have been killed in the fires, making it one of the deadliest in California’s history.

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