What Happened in the First Three Days of the Los Angeles Fires? A Comment on a Newsom-Bansa Mayor’s Fumble with Gavin Newsom

“Thousands of magnificent houses are gone, and many more will soon be lost,” he wrote. There is death all over the place. This disaster is one of the most terrible in our history. They can not put out the fires. What’s wrong with them?”

At least 16 people have died as a result of the fires that started on Saturday, and 12,000 structures have been destroyed. Mr. Trump alluded to that devastation in his post on Sunday.

Mr. Newsom told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he had invited Mr. Trump to visit “in the spirit of an open hand, not a closed fist,” but had yet to receive a response. The governor said that he was taking threatening statements from the president-elect very seriously. Mr. Trump would threaten our first responders, if he were to do so.

Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, has also fended off criticism from Mr. Trump, who blamed him for the failure to contain the fires and claimed he had blocked an infusion of water to Southern California over concerns about how it would affect a threatened fish species.

The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, was faced with questions about whether there was enough warning about the likelihood of devastating fires and whether water and firefighters were available during the initial response. At a news conference on Thursday, she avoided a question about her absence from the city when the fires began — she was in Ghana on a previously scheduled official visit — and said that any evaluation of mistakes or failures by “any body, department, individual” would come later.

Questions have been raised about how local and state authorities had prepared for the fires and how they have grown quickly into huge blazes.

Mr. Trump’s comments indicated that the fires, and officials’ response to them, will likely occupy a prominent place on his domestic political agenda when he takes office on Jan. 20. He has renewed a longstanding feud with California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who in turn has accused Mr. Trump of politicizing the fires.

Santa Ana Winds and Burnings in Los Angeles County and Ventura Counties: Preliminary Results from the Los Angeles Fire Detection

The sheriff’s department says more than 153,000 people have been forced to leave their homes and another 166,000 are under warnings. On Saturday, Los Angeles County officials said they changed the county’s alert and notification system to partner with the state’s alert center while they investigate the cause behind the false evacuation alerts sent to more than 10 million Angelenos last week.

Red flag warnings have been issued through Wednesday, with 30 to 50 mph wind gusts expected and 50 to 75 mph wind gusts in wind-prone mountains and foothills through at least Tuesday, according to the NWS.

The weather service predicts that the winds that helped propel the fires are going to continue over the next few days and create critical fire conditions in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties.

Several people have died and thousands of structures have been burned in several fires in Los Angeles that have been caused by the Santa Ana winds.