LOS ANGELES: The death toll from the Los Angeles wildfires has risen to 11, according to the LA county medical examiner’s Office. Five of those deaths were due to the Palisades fire, and the other six resulted from the Eaton fire.
Officials said they expected that number to rise as cadaver dogs go through levelled neighbourhoods to assess the devastation to an area larger than San Francisco. Five of those killed in the Eaton fire have been identified by relatives so far.
Many watched their homes burn on television in a state of shock.
Since the flames erupted in and around Los Angeles, scores of residents have returned to their still smouldering neighbourhoods even as the threat of new fires persisted and the nation's second-largest city remained unsettled. For some, it was a first look at the staggering reality of what was lost as the region of 13 million people grapples with the gargantuan challenge of overcoming the disaster and rebuilding.
Calmer winds enabled firefighters to start gaining some control of the biggest blazes in metropolitan LA on Friday before gusty weather returns over the weekend to an area that hasn't seen rain in more than eight months. But by Friday evening, new evacuations were issued in an area that includes The Getty Museum as the eastern side of the Palisades Fire spread, nearing Interstate 405.
Bridget Berg, who was at work when she saw on TV her house in Altadena erupt in flames, came back for the first time with her family two days later "just to make it real."
Their feet crunched across the broken bits of what had been their home for 16 years.
Her kids sifted through debris on the sidewalk, finding a clay pot and a few keepsakes as they searched for Japanese wood prints they hoped to recover. Her husband pulled his hand out of rubble near the still-standing fireplace, holding up a piece of petrified wood handed down by his grandmother
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