To stop the biggest of the catastrophic wildfires that is threatening to grow into one of the most prestigious neighborhoods in Los Angeles, firefighters are launching a full-scale offensive. In an effort to contain the Palisades fire, which has spread by another 1,000 acres and is now threatening Brentwood, aerial personnel have been dousing the flaming hills with water and fire retardant.

Palisades Fire makes a "significant" push into Brentwood. See More...

As firemen battled to contain the rapidly spreading fires, hydrants ran out, causing officials to get defensive. Overnight, winds are predicted to increase once more, stoking the fires that have already claimed the lives of at least eleven people.

"LA County had another night of unimaginable terror and heartbreak," Lindsey Horvath, the supervisor of Los Angeles County, stated on Saturday. The Palisades fire, which has burned almost 23,000 acres and is 11% contained, is the worst of the infernos, and firefighters have made some progress. However, the fire has moved to the Mandeville Canyon neighborhood, prompting evacuation orders for large areas of Brentwood, a posh neighborhood whose properties are owned by NBA player LeBron James, Disney CEO Bob Iger, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Getty Center, a hilltop museum with over 125,000 pieces of art, including masterworks by Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Rubens, Monet, and Degas, is also within the evacuation zone. So far, the building is unharmed.

Over 14,000 acres have been destroyed by the second-largest fire, the Eaton fire, which is 15% contained. The Kenneth and Hurst fires are two smaller flames that firefighters have largely put out. However, the National Weather Service issued a warning that Saturday and Sunday would see an upsurge in the strong Santa Ana winds that initially fueled the fires. Resources have been sent to California by the federal government, seven neighboring states, Canada, and Mexico.

The cause of the flames has not yet been determined. An area more than twice the size of Manhattan has been destroyed by the two largest ones combined. There are obligatory evacuation orders for about 153,000 residents, and another 166,000 have received warnings that they might also need to leave. The political fallout has already started. Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has been linked to the White House, launched an investigation on Friday to determine why several fire hydrants ran empty and a crucial reservoir was out of commission. Kristin Crowley, the fire chief of Los Angeles, voiced her displeasure with the shortfall.

"When a firefighter comes up to a hydrant, we expect there's going to be water," she explained.Additionally, Chief Crowley has criticized municipal officials for reducing the budget for her department and laying off mechanics, claiming that this has caused over 100 fire apparatuses to be out of commission. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who has been under fire for being in Ghana for the African nation's president's inauguration when the fires broke out in LA on Tuesday, alluded to her conflicts with Chief Crowley on Saturday.

"Let me be clear about something," Bass said during a press conference, "the fire chief and I are focused on fighting these fires and saving lives, and any differences that we might have will be worked out in private." A change.org petition calling for the mayor's immediate resignation has amassed over 70,000 signatures. According to officials, a sunset-to-sunrise curfew is being aggressively implemented in evacuated regions as concerns about looting increase.

On Saturday, Newsom declared that he will deploy 1,680 National Guard members to "keep communities safe" by doubling the force's size. There have been over two dozen arrests, including those for curfew violations, burglaries, and looting. According to Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna, 40 search and rescue teams are using cadaver dogs to comb through destroyed neighborhoods.

After house-to-house searches are carried out, the death toll is anticipated to increase.

Car wheel alloys were reduced to liquid metal puddles by the fires' extreme heat.

Only six of the sixty houses in his neighborhood of Pacific Palisades survived, according to estate agent Rick McGeagh, who spoke to the Reuters news agency.

There was only a statue of the Virgin Mary left at his residence.

"Everything else is ash and rubble," the 61-year-old father of See More.....