‘The Whole World Was on Fire’: Infernos Choke California

Evacuees are turned away from overflowing shelters as more than 300,000 residents are told to leave their homes and unrelenting flames reduce entire California communities into ashes and nine are confirmed dead.

 The most destructive fire in modern state history.

Communities across Ventura and Los Angeles counties including the city of Malibu, Calabasas and the Topanga Canyon area were placed under evacuation orders on Friday as the Woolsey and Hill fires torched more than 40,000 acres, razing countless buildings and homes to the ground. More than 600 members of law enforcement canvassed the area through Friday night, pounding on doors to tell residents to leave their homes as the fires closed in. However, the Los Angeles Times reports that a number of shelters have had to close their doors because they have no more space, creating an even more dire situation as the firestorm threatens to intensify when another round of strong, dry Santa Ana winds blow through on Saturday and Sunday. Meanwhile, the Camp Fire in Northern California, now the most destructive in state history, has claimed the lives of at least nine people and another 35 are missing in Butte County.

 Even in a state hardened to the ravages of wildfires, the infernos that raged at both ends of California on Friday were overpowering. At least nine people were killed, including several who died in their cars in a retirement community called Paradise. Malibu mansions burned. And in the neighborhood in Thousand Oaks where a gunman had killed 12 people in a crowded bar earlier in the week, survivors now fled the flames.

The fire-prone state was battling three major fires, one in the northern Sierra and two west of Los Angeles. In the northern town of Paradise, the ruins of houses and businesses smoldered throughout the day, while in Southern California, tens of thousands of residents fled their homes and jammed onto highways. Exotic lemurs and parrots were packed up and carried away to safety as fires ringed the Los Angeles Zoo in Griffith Park.

Officials estimated that the blaze in the north, called the Camp Fire, had destroyed a staggering 6,700 structures — most of them residential. Such vast devastation would make it the most destructive fire in modern state history.