On May 11, a terrifying fire burned down an entire mansion in just a few hours! The raging fire engulfed one house after another, the blue sky was dyed orange-red, and the red light ignited in the darkness was like the summoning signal of death, and the scene was like an apocalyptic maze.
As many as 900 homes were forced to evacuate, hundreds of people took emergency shelters, 20 multimillion-dollar mansions were razed to the ground overnight...
Image credit: Los Angeles Times
Just seeing these videos and photos transmitted from the scene makes people feel powerless to suffocate...
The fire, known as the Coastal Fire, took place in Orange County, Los Angeles, United States, and ignited at 2:44 p.m. local time on May 11 near a water treatment facility in Aliso Woods Canyon. It then quickly spread to the mansion area near Laguna Beach and, like dominoes, ignited one expensive home after another.
Image: DailyMail
Laguna Beach has been home to countless celebrities and billionaires, including Diane Keaton, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress, Ryan Murphy, screenwriter of American Horror Story, and Betty Davis, the star of Hollywood's Golden Age. Today's once palatial mansion area, the pool and lawn that show identity, all turned into ruins overnight...
A mansion (pictured below), which is being listed for sale for $9.89 million and nearly 70 million yuan, has been reduced to rubble in the fire, and it is impossible to find a new owner.
Image: DailyMail
This 7 bedroom, 8 bathroom mansion with its own swimming pool in the backyard overlooks the California mansion on one side and Laguna Beach on the other. Today, it has become a scorched earth...
Image: DailyMail
As of Thursday, May 12, residents of 900 houses had been forced to evacuate, 20 houses had been engulfed in flames, and 100 were above the line of fire and could be burned at any time.
From the satellite cloud map, this luxury residential area in Orange County is like being covered with lava, and everywhere is a red patch.
Image: DailyMail
A state of emergency has now been declared in the area, and the fire destroyed nearly 809,360 square meters of land and injured at least one firefighter. In the face of overwhelming smoke and flames, firefighters are helpless and can only do their best...
Image: DailyMail
The cause of the fire is still under investigation. But on the night of the fire, the local power company revealed that "at the time of the fire, there was a circuit failure nearby." Local residents said there was a power outage before the fire broke out. And California is experiencing a "historic arid climate," with the fire spreading rapidly because the wind blew embers into palm trees and dense, dry bushes, eventually burning down house after house.
Orange County Fire Chief Fennessy said climate change is causing rising fire risks in California, and that almost uncontrollable fires like this could happen again, "Unfortunately, I think that's what we're going to be going through in the coming weeks and years."
The U.S. Drought Monitor reported May 12 that in the past week alone, extreme droughts have widened from 40 percent to 60 percent in California, and January to April was the driest four months on record in California.
Not only in California, a recent study found that the extremely arid climate currently plaguing the West is the worst in centuries. The researchers determined that 2000 to 2021 was the driest period in 1200 years.
Last year's wildfire disaster in Canada's British province also shocked the whole of North America. The entire town of Lytton was burned down, and the reconstruction work is still unfinished.
Burned down town of Lyton Photo credit: Toronto Star
On May 13, Bill Blair, Canada's federal minister of public safety, announced that he would spend $24.7 million over five years to create a new department to respond to natural disasters and train more firefighters nationwide.
In addition, $416 million will be provided to communities affected by wildfires, such as Lyton, B.C.
Bill Blair said the Canadian federal government received 14 requests for assistance involving wildfires in 2021, compared with only four requests in total in the previous five years. At least 1,500 fires burned more than 850,000 hectares of land in 2021, the third worst year on record.
The Trudeau government has allocated $516 million in its April budget to train more firefighters, help communities buy firefighting equipment, and develop new mountain fire monitoring satellite systems. The federal government will also provide $8.4 million to support emergency preparedness and response for Bc's Aboriginal communities.
Regardless, hopefully this year's B.C. wildfire season will be safe and not like the arid weather in Los Angeles again.