“With the very calm winds this morning, I think we can really make progress, turn a corner, and start doing some containment on these fires,” Brent Pascua, a chief of Cal Fire battalion, SPOKE The Today Show on Thursday.

Currently disaster response is marred by disinformation and controversy. After several fire hydrants went out, president-elect Donald Trump baselessly accused California governor Gavin Newsom of mismanaging the state’s water supplies to save an endangered fish.

City employees have reached three water tanks in the hills near the Palisades Fire to increase pressure. That allows the tanks to fill more quickly so they can keep supplying the hydrants, Stewart said. Each tank can hold 1 million gallons. “We have full flowing hydrants,” he said.

More firefighters began arriving from Utah, Oregon, Arizona, Washington, and New Mexico. Several dozen task forces are on their way, according to Stewart, each with five fire engines and a command vehicle.

The plane started flying again on Wednesday. Twelve helicopters filled large buckets of water hanging from cables and suctioned seawater through snorkels. Six planes are also working on the fires, including a pair of “super scoop” planes skimming across the surface of the Pacific to get water. Helicopters and scoop planes dumped water on the fire areas, bringing firefighters closer and extinguishing them.

Meanwhile, other planes dropped fire retardant ahead of the inferno, covering the potential fuel with a layer of non-combustible chemicals and slowing its advance. A C-130 cargo plane that Cal Fire acquired from the Coast Guard and retrofitted this summer can drop 4,000 gallons of retardant. That buys time for firefighters to dig and bulldoze firebreaks in the bare ground.

With the ocean holding the Palisades Fire to the south, responders will try to keep it from breaking east or west. “The real spread is sideways,” Pimlott said.

The red flag warning for increased fire danger will remain until Friday, with humidity at only 8-12 percent. California suffered an abnormally dry winter, with 40 percent of the state under drought conditions.

“Fuels remain critically dry,” Cal Fire’s James Magana SAYS at a briefing on Thursday morning. “You can expect to see critical rates of spread, especially at the top ends or in channels that are aligned with the wind.”

On Saturday, the wind direction is expected to reverse. If the firefighters are not ready, the heel of the fire can take the lead and run north.

Even if they are able to control the fire within a circle of firebreaks and natural obstacles, that is not the end of the task. Firefighters had to put out small fires within that footprint.

“That’s a critical stage, to clear these hot spots or anything that might change if the wind picks up again,” Upton said.

Moving forward, the city must clear debris, restore utilities, and analyze environmental damage before allowing people to return. As the canyons are depleted of trees and vegetation, mudslides become a threat once the rains return.

Los Angeles will face the prospect of rebuilding its devastated communities. That’s an opportunity to make them less vulnerable to the next fire, said Max Moritz, a wildfire specialist at the University of California Cooperative Extension.

Although homes in many cases must be built with fireproof materials, California law does not say anything about how to put them. Techniques such as clustering houses instead of spreading them among the trees will make it easier to protect them from fire, and easier to evacuate, he said.

“That’s part of the hope here, that we can do some of this better, smarter, and safer,” Moritz said.

Updated 1-10-2024 1:10 GMT: Updated the number of structures destroyed.