One of the five people killed in ferocious fires tearing around Los Angeles died trying to protect his home from the flames, his sister said Wednesday, describing the moment she had to leave him behind.

Victor Shaw ignored firefighters’ pleas to flee as fire began tearing through the Altadena area, Shari Shaw told local broadcaster KTLA.

The 66-year-old, who lived with his sister, told her he wanted to stay behind and fight the flames as she made the heartbreaking decision to leave their family home.

“When I went back in and yelled out his name, he didn’t reply back,” Shari Shaw said.

“I had to get out because the embers were so big and flying like a firestorm that I had to save myself.

“I looked behind me, and the house was starting to go up in flames, and I had to leave.”

Al Tanner said after the fire had swept through the neighborhood, he went back to the charred property where he found the body of Shaw, a friend of his, on the driveway with a garden hose still in his hand.

“It looked like he was trying to save the home that his parents had had for almost 55 years,” he told KTLA.

The broadcaster reported that Shaw’s body was still at the property, with first responders stretched thin over a wide area by challenging fire conditions.

Furious winds have spotted blazes far and wide in a hellish two days around Los Angeles that has seen firefighters out-flanked by vicious, fast-moving fires.

Thousands of acres (hectares) have burned, with around 1,500 buildings razed, and a large number of people have been hurt — many because they did not heed warnings to leave, authorities have said.

Fire authorities in the area have ordered over 100,000 people to leave their homes.

They issue frequent exhortations to get out as soon as an order is posted, and speak often of their frustration with people who stay behind.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A beach house engulfed by the flames of the Palisades fire in California. (File)

Firefighters scrambled to corral a fast-moving wildfire in the Los Angeles hillsides dotted with celebrity homes as a fierce windstorm hit Southern California on Tuesday (January 7, 2025), fanning the blaze seen for miles as scores of residents abandoned their cars and fled on foot to safety with roads blocked.

Nearly 26,000 people in more than 10,000 households and more than 13,000 structures are under threat from the blaze, said Kristin Crowley, fire chief of the LA Fire Department. California Gov. Gavin Newsom said many structures have already been destroyed, though officials did not give an exact number.

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Newsom warned residents across Southern California not to assume they are out of danger, saying the worst of the winds are expected between 10 p.m. Tuesday and 5 a.m. Wednesday.

Forecasters predicted the windstorm would last for days, producing isolated gusts that could top 100 mph (160 kph) in mountains and foothills — including in areas that haven’t seen substantial rain in months. Roughly half a million utility customers were at risk of having their power shut off to reduce the risk of equipment sparking blazes.

In the Pacific Palisades neighborhood in western Los Angeles, a fire swiftly consumed nearly 2 square miles (just over 5 square kilometers) of land, sending up a dramatic plume of smoke visible across the city. Residents in Venice Beach, some 6 miles (10 kilometers) away, reported seeing the flames. It was one of several blazes across the area.

Sections of Interstate 10 and the scenic Pacific Coast Highway were closed to all non-essential traffic to aid in evacuation efforts. But other roads were blocked. Some residents jumped out of their vehicles to get out of danger and waited to be picked up.

Resident Kelsey Trainor said the only road in and out of her neighborhood was completely blocked. Ash fell all around them while fires burned on both sides of the road.

“We looked across and the fire had jumped from one side of the road to the other side of the road,” Trainor said. “People were getting out of the cars with their dogs and babies and bags, they were crying and screaming. The road was just blocked, like full-on blocked for an hour.”

An Associated Press journalist saw the roof and chimney of one home in flames and another residence where the walls were burning. The neighbourhood that borders Malibu about 20 miles (32 kilometres) west of downtown LA includes hillside streets of tightly packed homes along winding roads nestled against the Santa Monica Mountains and stretches down to beaches along the Pacific Ocean.

Long-time Palisades resident Will Adams said he was down in town when the fires started and immediately went to pick his two kids up from St. Matthews Parish’s school, which is now in the line of the fire.

His wife, who was at home, was driving down the main evacuation road for residents in the upper part of the neighborhood when embers flew into her car.

“She vacated her car and left it running,” Adams said. She and many other residents walked down toward the ocean until it was safe.

Adams said he had never seen a fire this low into the neighborhood in the 56 years he’s lived there.

“It is crazy, it’s everywhere, in all the nooks and crannies of the Palisades. One home’s safe, the other one’s up in flames,” Adams said.

He watched as the sky turned brown and then black as homes started burning. He could hear loud popping and bangs “like small explosions,” which he said he believes were the transformers exploding on the electric poles.

Actor James Woods posted footage of flames burning through bushes and past palm trees on a hill near his home. The towering orange flames billowed among the landscaped yards between the homes.

“Standing in my driveway, getting ready to evacuate,” Woods said in the short video on X.

Actor Steve Guttenberg, who lives in the Pacific Palisades, urged people who abandoned their cars to leave their keys behind so they could be moved to make way for fire trucks.

“This is not a parking lot,” Guttenberg told KTLA. “I have friends up there and they can’t evacuate … I’m walking up there as far as I can moving cars.”

The erratic weather caused President Joe Biden to cancel plans to travel to inland Riverside County, California, where he was to announce the establishment of two new national monuments in the state. Biden will deliver his remarks in Los Angeles instead.

The National Weather Service said the wind event that was expected to peak early Wednesday could be the strongest Santa Anawindstorm in more than a decade across Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

The Los Angeles Unified School District said it was temporarily relocating students from three campuses in the Pacific Palisades area due to the fire.

Amazon and MGM Studios canceled a premiere of Jennifer Lopez’s new film “Unstoppable” due to the fires and high winds.

The winds will act as an “atmospheric blow-dryer” for vegetation, bringing a long period of fire risk, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California, Los Angeles and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

“We really haven’t seen a season as dry as this one follow a season as wet as the previous one,” Swain said Monday.

Recent dry winds, including the notorious Santa Anas, have contributed to warmer-than-average temperatures in Southern California, where there’s been very little rain so far this season.

Southern California hasn’t seen more than 0.1 inches (0.25 centimetres) of rain since early May. Much of the region has fallen into moderate drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Meanwhile, up north, there have been multiple drenching storms.

Areas where gusts could create extreme fire conditions include the charred footprint of last month’s wind-driven Franklin Fire, which damaged or destroyed 48 structures, mostly homes, in and around Malibu.