Meet Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley. She boasts about being the first female and LGBTQ fire chief in the LA Fire Department. Promoting a culture of DEI is her priority.

Does this make you feel safer? pic.twitter.com/9PG9bUmYCY

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 8, 2025

As for the actual cause of this nightmare, the National Weather Service’s Los Angeles office on Wednesday issued an update saying “Widespread damaging north to northeast winds and extreme fire weather conditions will continue through mid afternoon. Downed trees and power lines, power outages, hazardous driving conditions, increased traffic, and airport delays should be expected across the Southland. Any wildfires that start will likely spread rapidly with extreme fire behavior.”

“Otherwise, dry conditions are expected with warmer conditions to develop for late week. The high speed river of air remains over LA County this morning and is fueling a widespread major wind event. The core of this low level jet will slowly move southward during the day and this will cause the winds over LA to slowly decrease. Since the wind speeds are so high now (mtn gusts 70 to 90 mph) the slow decrease will not bring the winds down to below warning levels until early evening. There will, however, be a fairly notable drop off in wind speeds late this morning,” the bulletin continued.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection this morning reported the Pacific Palisades fire had grown to at about 2,921 acres, the Eaton Canyon fire was about 1,000 acres and the fire in Sylmar was about 500 acres, all were zero percent contained, according to ABC News.