MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Today, every school in Los Angeles is closed. It's one way that wildfires have affected the nation's second-largest city.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The fires have sometimes destroyed whole neighborhoods. They wrecked the homes of celebrities. Billy Crystal says he lost the house where he's lived with his wife since 1979. Several people are dead that we know of so far, and new fires appear as desert winds blow embers around the region.
MARTIN: We're joined now by NPR's Adrian Florido in Los Angeles. Good morning, Adrian.
ADRIAN FLORIDO, BYLINE: Good morning, Michel.
MARTIN: Could you just give us an overview of the kind of destruction that these fires are causing?
FLORIDO: Well, a lot of the destruction so far is from the Pacific Palisades fire, which is where one of the two biggest fires is burning. News choppers were able to fly over that affluent coastal community yesterday and filmed block after block of homes reduced to ash. Homes in nearby Malibu also burned. The Hollywood Hills caught fire last night, and that blaze has quickly spread, forcing chaotic evacuations there. I was able, yesterday, to get into a neighborhood ravaged by the other big fire, the Eaton fire in Altadena, on the east side of Los Angeles. I walked past more than 20 homes burning or already burned to the ground, and that was over just a couple of blocks.
MARTIN: I mean, it just sounds like a horrific scene there. Could you just - would you just describe more about what you saw?
FLORIDO: You know, well, the ruins of many of the houses in the neighborhood where I was were still burning. And every so often, something under the rubble would explode, or a wooden door frame would finish collapsing, and it would shoot up this puff of embers. And it was windy, so neighbors were rushing to make sure that those embers didn't set their houses on fire. I met Britney Mann as she and her brother were hosing down their roof and their lawns before evacuating.
BRITNEY MANN: The street behind us are what caught fire, so our backyard caught fire. So we're still trying to get those fires out before we leave.
FLORIDO: And across the street, Michel, I met Sarah Rudd. She evacuated on Tuesday night. But while she was gone, her neighbor, who had not evacuated, noticed that her house had caught fire, and she said that he grabbed his hose.
SARAH RUDD: Some of our neighbors who stayed back when they shouldn't have - they actually saved a lot of homes, like our house right here. You can see where it's charred on the side. And he saved our house.
FLORIDO: When we spoke, she had just come back to check on her house. She was leaving it again. But as we spoke, other houses were burning on her block. So hers was still at risk, and there were no firefighters around.
MARTIN: Adrian, to that point, we've been hearing about how there just don't seem to be enough resources to fight all these fires. What can you tell us about that?
FLORIDO: Well, fire officials have said LA just doesn't have enough firefighters to tackle so many large fires at once. The ones who have been out there since Tuesday are exhausted. LA's mayor, Karen Bass, says that more crews are coming in from other counties and cities. Officials also said that some of the fire hydrants that firefighters were tapping into in the Pacific Palisades went dry on Tuesday. Winds that day had prevented aircraft from doing water drops. So hydrants were the only option, and they couldn't take the strain. Janisse Quinones is LA's top water official.
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JANISSE QUINONES: You're fighting a wildfire with a fire hydrant system. Fire hydrants are not made to fight multiple houses, hundreds of houses at a time.
FLORIDO: She said that officials are still working to fill the tanks and the reservoirs where water is needed.
MARTIN: Adrian, do you have any sense of when these fires may be under control?
FLORIDO: No, not really, Michel. There are several major fires burning across the region. Conditions are extremely dry, and it's the winds spreading these flames and making this all so unpredictable. High winds are expected at least through tonight, so this emergency is not over.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Adrian Florido in Los Angeles. Adrian, thank you.
FLORIDO: Thanks, Michel. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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