Even as four wildfires continued to burn in Los Angeles County on Thursday, the blazes were already rewriting the record books.
Over the last nine days, seven fires have broken out across the nation’s second-largest metropolitan region, ravaging a combined area bigger than the 40 square miles that comprise the city of San Francisco and nearly twice the size of Manhattan, New York. An eighth fire ignited Monday night near Oxnard in neighboring Ventura County, but fire crews held it to 61 acres.
The two biggest infernos, the Palisades and the Eaton fires, are now among the most destructive blazes in California history, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).
As of Thursday morning, the Eaton Fire, which has burned 14,117 acres and destroyed more than 7,000 structures, was the second most destructive fire in state history behind the 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California’s Butte County, which consumed 153,336 acres and leveled 18,804 structures, according to Cal Fire.
The Palisades Fire has surged to fourth on Cal Fire’s list of most destructive wildfires in the Golden State after destroying more than 5,000 structures and burning 23,713 acres of drought-parched land.
The 62 square miles comprising the fire zones are just a part of the 4,083 square miles that make up all of LA County.
As reported by ABC News