Los Angeles fires live: Californians warned to stay indoors amid smoke fears as wildfire evacuation zone expands

Peter Bowes
Report from Los Angeles

It is extremely difficult – in one moment there is a glimmer of hope to bring these fires under control.

Then there’s the containment percentages, which are the numbers that everybody looks at in the city all the time, but those numbers are still very, very low.

There are two major fires, and of particular concern is the one that cuts through the Pacific Rim, which is still spreading.

It is moving toward other densely populated areas, Brentwood west of Los Angeles and the sprawling San Fernando Valley.

I’m just north of here and there were fires nearby, east and west as well.

It’s an extraordinary situation when you have all these hells right in this big, sprawling city at the same time.

This is a big part of the problem as resources are stretched to the limit and some of the political fallout is starting to kick in.

There is a tremendous amount of anger and frustration about the way wildfires are being fought.

Likewise, I think a lot of people understand that firefighters themselves are stressed to the absolute limit.

It is hard to imagine a catastrophe of this scale. I’ve been here almost 30 years and I’ve been through fires, but they’ve been isolated incidents, now we’re dealing with multiple fires.

Talk about it now in the past tense—Palisades was a wonderful, village-like suburb of Los Angeles. It was just a beautiful place.