At least five fires are currently burning in Los Angeles where officials warn more high winds could further fan the flames that have been causing total devastation this past week.

At least 10 people have been killed by the wildfires with 180,000 evacuated as neighbourhoods are destroyed.

As firefighters and responders work tirelessly to contain them, here is what we know about how the out-of-control LA wildfires started.

How did the LA fires start?

The Palisades fire was the first to erupt on Tuesday (7 January) before the Eaton, Hurst, Lidia and Kenneth fires began. The earlier Sunset, Woodley and Olivas fires have now been contained.

Strong winds and a lack of rain are driving the blazes which are desperately being tackled to contain. With these powerful gusts blowing inland, they create these conditions where humidity drops. So, if a fire starts up the winds can fan it into an inferno within minutes.

Southern California’s fire season generally stretches from May to October but state governor Gavin Newsom has said: “There’s no fire season, it’s fire year.”

Thousands of buildings have been destroyed. (Apu Gomes/Getty Images)

Experts say climate change is altering the background conditions in the area and increasing the likelihood of these wildfires.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: “Climate change, including increased heat, extended drought, and a thirsty atmosphere, has been a key driver in increasing the risk and extent of wildfires in the western United States.”

California is particularly vulnerable after having a very warm summer and a very dry period over recent months.

Local fire chief David Acuna told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme there isn’t ‘any conclusive evidence’ the fires were lit on purpose as he added: “Now that the life safety is primarily taken care of, and that we have sufficient resources to assist with that, now they’re able to start digging into the investigation and see what they can discover.”

Strong winds and dry conditions mean the fires spread rapidly. (Apu Gomes/Getty Images)

Arrests made

North of the Palisades fire, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) believe the Kenneth fire was started intentionally as an arrest has been made.

Minutes after the fast-spreading blaze broke out yesterday, citizens reportedly restrained a man for allegedly attempting to start a fire in Woodland Hills.

Sean Dinse of the LAPD’s Topanga Division told KTLA 5 he was later detained by police in relation to the fire. A local claimed the suspect was armed with a ‘propane tank or a flamethrower’.

According to police there have also been 20 arrests as National Guard troops have been deployed to stop looting in evacuated areas.

Devastating impact of the LA fires

Across the county, nearly 180,000 residents have had evacuation orders as hundreds of buildings have burned down.

Major celebrities like Paris Hilton are amongst those who have had homes devastated by the wildfires. Ten people are currently confirmed dead but it is expected that the death toll will rise.

Another 200,000 residents are under an evacuation warning which means they may be required to soon leave their homes.

The fires are said to be the most destructive in LA history with over 10,000 buildings affected and 60,000 at risk.

What is being done to combat the fires?

Los Angeles Fire Department chief Kristin Crowley told press during a recent briefing: “We are not out of danger. You can see the active fires that are burning with strong winds that are going to continue throughout the night.

“I can tell you and assure you that firefighters and first responders remain focused on protecting lives and property. We urge the public to help us.”

Firefighters are working tirelessly to contain the fires. Palisades was six percent contained last night, Eaton is zero percent contained, Hurst is beginning to be contained, Lidia is 60 percent contained and the newest fire, Kenneth so far covers nearly 1,000 acres.

A fire weather outlook for southern California has been brought down from ‘extremely critical’ to ‘critical’ but there is said to be no rain forecast for at least a week.

A US businessman has come out to share what he did which he believes saved his home from total destruction during the LA wildfires.

While his neighbours’ homes turned to ash before everyone’s eyes, David Steiner’s $9million Malibu mansion remained as the only building left standing on the row of houses.

The Palisades fire is just one of eight that are raging around the LA county, which has torn through 20,000 acres at the time of writing.

Among the acres, 5,000 homes and businesses have been destroyed and many left without a home or source of income.

With a slew of celebrities coming out to share that their homes had been taken during the inferno, Steiner was left more than a little shocked when the smoke cleared and his home was the only one left relatively untouched.

David Steiner’s home was left untouched (JOSH EDELSON / Contributor / Getty)

So, what happened?

As it turns out, Steiner pre-emptively took measures to ensure the safety of his home in any instance of disaster, be it a fire or a flood.

In short, he made it fireproof and believes that these features of his property are what saved his home from ruin.

Steiner told the New York Post: “It’s stucco and stone with a fireproof roof.”

He thinks his choice to design the 4,200-square-foot, four-bedroom home in a specific way saved it.

Admitting that it is ‘built like a cruise ship‘, it was built to withstand earthquakes and has an ‘ultra-sturdy construction’.

According to the father-of-three, it boasts pilings ‘like 50 feet into the bedrock’ which keep it steady when strong waves crash in.

“To be totally honest with you, I never in a million years thought a wildfire would jump to the Pacific Coast Highway and start a fire,” Steiner said. “I thought, ‘If we ever have an earthquake, this would be the last thing to go’. I honestly didn’t think that if we had a fire, this would be the last thing to go. And it was.

“The architecture is pretty nice. But the stucco and fireproof roof are real nice.”

When the smoke cleared, he saw his home for the first time since the fire began (JOSH EDELSON / Contributor / Getty)

The retired waste-management professional described seeing towering flames and thinking that all was lost, until his friends and then wife told him that their home was on the news.

The three-storey home, which was vacant at the time, was thought to have been doomed after a contractor sent him a video of flames traveling through his street on Tuesday (7 January).

“[The contractor] was watching the news reports and saw my neighbor’s house going down and told me, ‘It looks like your house is going too.’

“I started getting pictures and realised we had made it through,” Steiner continued. “My wife sent me something this morning that said, ‘Last house standing’. And it brought a pretty big smile to my face at a pretty bad time.”

He said: “I was getting texts from people saying, ‘We’re praying for you. It’s so horrible’. I said, ‘Don’t pray for me – what I lost is material goods’. I lost a property, but others lost their homes. I didn’t have my family’s mementos there. It wasn’t my family home. My heart goes out to those who lost their homes.”

Stars including Paris Hilton, Anna Faris, Eugene Levy and Billy Crystal, have all lost their homes in the last few days as the fires continue to rage in LA.

The wildfire which has burned across California and incinerated parts of Los Angeles is actually several different fires, and a man has been arrested in connection with one of them.

The largest fires are the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire, while there are also three other fires called Kenneth, Hurst and Lidia.

At least 10 people have now died due to the various wildfires, the county coroner’s office says, while thousands of people have been forced to evacuate their homes and many of those homes have now burned down.

The Kenneth Fire is the newest of the blazes and according to The Independent, the LAPD believe it may have been started intentionally, and a man was arrested yesterday (9 January).

FOX reports that a suspect was detained as part of the investigation into the fires, with local residents claiming that a man on a bike carrying a large blowtorch had been trying to set bins and old Christmas trees on fire.

According to the report a group of local residents grabbed the man and held him until police arrived to make an arrest.

There are several wildfires blazing around Los Angeles (Apu Gomes/Getty Images)

Officials have said that at least 10,000 buildings have been burned down by the wildfires this week, though firefighters have made some progress in containing some of the blazes which are burning in and around LA.

However, the strong winds which have quickly spread the flames are still a danger, with LA Mayor Karen Bass saying: “We are expecting this fire to rapidly spread due to high winds.”

The Kenneth Fire appears to have started in the San Fernando Valley near the West Hills neighbourhood and close to Ventura County to the north west of LA, and burned less than two miles away from a school where people were sheltering from the Palisades Fire.

The blaze is located to the north of the Palisades Fire which has torn through several neighbourhoods, including some of the locations which house a number of celebrities.

Thousands of homes have been destroyed this week (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

With so many people forced to evacuate from their homes much has had to be left behind.

As strong winds rapidly spread the fire around LA some roads became gridlocked with cars full of people trying to follow their evacuation orders, until many motorists had to abandon their vehicles and continue their escape on foot.

Emergency services had to deploy bulldozers to clear the roads so they could get through, while off-duty firefighters were asked to step in and help tackle the flames.

The LADbible group has contacted the LAPD for comment.

Joe Rogan’s prediction about the wildfire that has spread through California and is now affecting Los Angeles has ended up being accurate.

Granted, this is a prediction he’s made several times throughout the years on his podcast and has some first-hand experience with since he lived in California for years and was evacuated from his home multiple times.

The fires that have spread across the US state this week have resulted in thousands of people being evacuated from their homes, and many of those homes have been burned to the ground by the rampaging inferno.

Strong winds have carried the fire across great distances and caused it to spread quickly, and a state of emergency has been declared in California.

The notorious podcaster used to live in California, but in 2020 moved out to Texas citing a number of concerns including the stricter Covid-19 restrictions that California had during the pandemic, and he has since claimed that it has gone ‘full communist’.

The podcaster has said the wildfires are among his reasons for leaving California, along with the state’s lockdown rules during the pandemic (YouTube/The Joe Rogan Experience)

Apart from that, Rogan also regularly brought up the wildfires that regularly plague California, having said that he was evacuated from his home three times and was ‘always waiting for the next fire’.

In one of his episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience, he said that the last time he’d been evacuated ‘two houses in front of my house burnt to the ground’.

Rogan also recounted a conversation he had with a firefighter who told him that LA had been ‘lucky’ with the wind and said that if it was blowing in the wrong direction it’d be devastating for the city.

“He goes, ‘One day, it’s just going to be the right wind, and fire’s gonna start in the right place, and it’s going to burn through LA all the way to the ocean, and there’s not a f**king thing we can do about it’,” Rogan said of the firefighter’s warning.

In a 2018 episode back when Rogan was still living in California, Derren Brown went on the podcast and said he’d had to avoid the fires to make it in.

Thousands have been evacuated from their homes due to wildfires rampaging across California (Apu Gomes/Getty Images)

In that episode Rogan echoed the firefighter’s warning that the wind could spread the fire across LA, and in a 2019 episode with David Wallace-Wells, the podcaster was told that because of climate change, the California wildfires could get up to ’64 times worse’ by the end of this century.

It’s something Rogan brings up a lot on his show, and with the frequency of wildfires in Californi, it was bound to happen.

Some months before the latest devastating fires one of California’s biggest insurers, State Farm, cancelled a plethora of insurance policies on houses in Pacific Palisades according to Newsweek.

Pacific Palisades is one of the areas that has been devastated by the fires, and the company cancelled insurance policies to avoid ‘financial failure’.

People living in areas prone to being scorched by wildfire are finding it increasingly difficult to get their houses insured, meaning that if they lose their home to the flames they won’t be covered for their loss.