LOS ANGELES, United States: Exhausted Los Angeles firefighters on Sunday braced for the return of yet more dangerously strong gusts, as California´s governor slammed “hurricane-force winds of misinformation” surrounding blazes that have killed 27 people.
The two largest fires, which have obliterated almost 40,000 acres and razed entire neighbourhoods of the second biggest US city, were for the first time both more than half contained, officials announced.
But the National Weather Service warned that powerful winds and low humidity would again bring “dangerous high-end red flag fire weather conditions” from Monday, with gusts up to 130-kms per hour potentially returning.
“This is the last... we hope, of the extreme” wind events, said Governor Gavin Newsom.
It will be “the fourth major wind event just in the last three months -- we only had two in the prior four years,” he told MSNBC´s “Inside with Jen Psaki.”
Officials were accused of being unprepared at the outbreak of fires this month. Now, 135 fire engines and their crews are prepositioned to tackle new outbreaks, along with helicopters and bulldozers, said Newsom.
Firefighters, who since January 7 have been battling flames, digging trenches and uprooting vegetation to create perimeters around fires non-stop, said the largest conflagration, the Palisades Fire, was 52 percent contained.
That fire has killed at least 10 people.
Evacuation orders were lifted this weekend for dozens of neighborhoods in upscale western Los Angeles.
Further east, the Eaton Fire, which killed at least 17 in the Altadena suburbs, is 81 percent contained.
More residents were able to return to their homes there too. Others reunited with missing pets they had feared were dead.
Serena Null told AFP of her joy at finding her cat Domino, after having to leave him behind as flames devoured her family home in Altadena.
The pair were reunited at NGO Pasadena Humane, where Domino -- suffering singed paws, a burnt nose and a high level of stress -- was taken after being rescued. “I just was so relieved and just so happy that he was here,” a tearful Null said.