‘We’re not in the clear yet’: Los Angeles facing extreme fire danger as high winds return

On Saturday, a massive wall of flames from the Palisades Fire approached a residential neighborhood near Brentwood. The daunting and chilling images showed just how close the blaze came to burning down an entire block of houses, but air support in the form of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopter pilots sprang into action, knocking down the flames and limiting the damage.

If more fires sprout up on Tuesday and Wednesday, crews might not have that luxury because more Santa Ana winds are on their way.

The National Weather Service issued an Extreme Fire Danger warning over the entirety of southwest California on Monday, that will last through Wednesday. It’s the strongest and most clear warning the service could give to signal that, while it may feel as though the region’s hardest times are behind them, fires are unpredictable and can strike at any moment.

“We are not in the clear as of yet, and we must not let our guard down,” said Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley in a news conference on Monday.

The winds are expected to be in the range of 50 and 70 miles per hour in parts of L.A. and Ventura counties starting Tuesday morning.

Existing blazes, the destructive Palisades and Eaton fires, were at 17% and 33% containment respectively as of Tuesday morning. Crews spent much of the weekend and Monday taking an aggressive approach on the pair of blazes, using aircrafts to extinguish flames as well as putting up containment lines with the aim of preventing the spread in the case of extreme winds.

But in the case of new fires that may sprout up, it may be tough for crews to extinguish them — like they did Monday in Ventura and Riverside counties — as quickly as they’d like if it’s too windy for air support.