ABC North American correspondent, Barabara Miller is in LA telling us the latest.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Well, in terms of this fire, the Eaton fire, authorities now say it is 45 percent contained.
00:09The Palisades fire that's down on the coastline, round to Malibu, is 19 percent contained.
00:16But a very, very different atmosphere here than when I was here five or six days ago.
00:21And, in fact, it's actually kind of quiet in terms of people because the residents are
00:26no longer being allowed in here.
00:28There are a lot of people doing work around.
00:30I don't know if you can hear jackhammers in the background.
00:33There are people doing damage assessments.
00:36There are people trying to repair power lines.
00:39And again, just still hard to take in the extent of the devastation and also how bits
00:45of this community, Altadena, were spared.
00:48So here we've got, you know, this Jeep completely destroyed here.
00:53Behind that, in what must have been the backyard, I guess, of this property or another, you
00:58can still see the barbecue standing.
01:01And then here, you know, the house is, you know, there's something left of the house,
01:06at least.
01:07The roof is destroyed.
01:08I don't know what you would find if you went in there.
01:10In fact, we were just looking and thinking perhaps someone had tried to break into that
01:16house.
01:17There is some damage on the door frame.
01:20But that is one of the few places in this particular street where there's anything left
01:24off at all.
01:25As you can see here, so much is just totally gone.
01:29But the winds were not as strong as had been feared.
01:33It was predicted they could reach more than 110 kilometres an hour overnight.
01:36That didn't happen.
01:38And Barbara, there have been some more warnings about criminal activity in the fire zones.
01:42Talk us through what's happening there.
01:45Well, like I said, there perhaps with this house, there's some indication of perhaps
01:51some attempt at a break in.
01:53We have seen a number of arrests, several dozen now, on people on suspicion of looting.
01:58There have also been a few arrests on suspicion of arson.
02:02And what people are also worried about is scams, insurance scams, donation scams.
02:08And another thing they're really talking about more and more is price gouging.
02:13So authorities in L.A. really trying to hammer home that they will pursue people who are
02:19price gouging.
02:21They say you should only be able to put prices up by about 10 percent.
02:25So if you're charging a lot to rent out an Airbnb or extortion amounts for that kind
02:30of thing, they say they will come after you and you will feel the full extent of the law.
02:36In terms of the residents, that also means because of the threat of crime that they,
02:40as I say, they are kept out of these areas unless they've got in here.
02:45So some people who have some of their house still standing are essentially camping out
02:49here.
02:50We talked to a guy just a few streets down the road who does handovers with his wife
02:55at the police checkpoint because she can't come back in, but he can stay in.
03:00So a lot of worry and fear for people left here, not just about what happens as they
03:05try to pick up their lives and move forward and try and deal with insurance after their
03:10home has gone, but about trying to guard themselves against possible criminal activity.