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As the catastrophic wildfires continue to rage in Southern California, some Los Angeles residents are not waiting around to see if their city survives.
Instead, they are packing up and moving across the country to the relative safety of the Northeast.
Real estate mogul Ryan Serhant, star of Netflix’s “Owning Manhattan,” said in an interview on Fox Business’ “The Claman Countdown” on Monday that within less than 24 hours of the outbreak of the deadly fire in the exclusive L.A. enclave of Pacific Palisades, his real estate firm, SERHANT, started getting calls from agents in and around Los Angeles, saying they have clients interested in relocating to the East Coast.
“On Thursday that picked up,” Serhant said. “Obviously, on Friday it became worse and worse. We’ve been fielding those calls all throughout the weekend, and we’ve started facilitating rentals, but now those are about to turn into purchases.”
Serhant said he has been hearing from clients that the wildfires became “the final straw” that pushed them to take the plunge and leave California for good.
“They are moving to Connecticut, New Jersey, parts of Long Island, the Hamptons, New York City … and across Florida,” Serhant said of the recent L.A. transplants.
Even before the fires overwhelmed Los Angeles, people have been leaving California in droves.
That trend started during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and continued into last year, according to figures from some of the nation’s major moving companies, reported KTLA.
Stay up to date with the NYP’s coverage of the terrifying LA-area fires
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- Recall effort against Newsom underway in California following alleged mishandling of LA fires
- Follow along with The Post’s live coverage of the LA wildfires
Data from U-Haul, Atlas Van Lines, and United Van Lines released days before the outbreak of the wildfires showed that there were more people moving out of California than moving in.
For example, U-Haul reported that outbound customers accounted for 51% of one-way traffic flowing out of the Golden State, while only 49% were inbound.
New wildfire ignites in Ventura County
The exodus of panicked Angelenos comes as California firefighters, who have been battling flames on multiple fronts for a week, were forced to tackle a new blaze that flared up in Ventura County Monday.
The latest conflagration, named the Auto Fire, was first reported at around 7:15 p.m. PST in a dry riverbed along the Santa Clara River in an agricultural area near Ventura Boulevard and Auto Center Drive in Ventura, CA.
The flames raced through tall brush and burned up some 56 acres, before about 75 firefighters stopped its forward progress, according to Cal Fire.
Crews remained on the scene overnight putting out hotspots. No damage to structures has been reported.
Since January 7, multiple ferocious wildfires have decimated parts of Southern California, killing at least 24 people, scorching through more than than 40,500 acres, and razing at least 12,300 structures, including a string of multimillion-dollar homes belonging to such Hollywood stars as Billy Crystal, John Goodman, and Anna Farris.
As of Tuesday, the Palisades Fire was just 17% contained after a weeklong battle to stop its spread, while the Eaton Fire in the vicinity of Altadena was 35% contained, reported Cal Fire.
Ferocious Santa Ana winds return
The outbreak of this latest wildfire coincided with a dire warning from the National Weather Service regarding the return of strong Santa Ana winds bringing more fast-moving dry air to the tinderbox-like environment in and around L.A.
Early Tuesday, winds gusted to 40 mph in coastal and valley areas and 50 mph in the mountains, said meteorologist Todd Hall, of the National Weather Service. Gusts up to 65 mph were forecast to continue through midday Wednesday, reported the Associated Press.
The weather service said that the powerful winds combined with extremely dry conditions created a “particularly dangerous situation” in which any new conflagration could explode into an inferno. According to Hall, the conditions are such that embers could spread up to 3 miles ahead of flames and fire tornadoes are possible.
The agency’s rare “Extreme Fire Danger” warning applies to the entirety of Southwest California, suggesting that the hard-hit region could be looking at more difficult days ahead.
“We are not in the clear as of yet, and we must not let our guard down,” said Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley in a press conference on Monday.
Magic pink powder to the rescue
Fire crews have been relying on a bright pink-red fire retardant called Phos-Check to smother the flames by dropping it from the air. Officials said they have used thousands of gallons of the vibrantly colored substance over the past week, reported the Associated Press.
Phos-Check is sold by the company Perimeter, and it has been used to fight blazes in the U.S. since 1963. It is also the most used fire suppressant in the world, according to a 2022 Associated Press report.
While the exact chemical composition of Phos-Check is unknown, according to the BBC, its manufacturer has previously revealed that it is 80% water, 14% fertilizer-type salts, and 6% iron oxide, which gives the substance its eye-catching shade to make it visible from afar.
So how do fire retardants work? According to the U.S. Forest Service, which has used 13 aircraft to dump suppressants on the Los Angeles fires, they help starve a fire of oxygen and slow the rate of burn by cooling and coating vegetation and other surfaces.
Perimeter has advised the public to wipe off the pink powder with warm water and mild detergent as soon as it is safe to do so because the longer it dries, the harder it is to remove.
Projected losses surge
AccuWeather on Monday once again raised its estimate of fire-related economic losses to between $250 billion and $270 billion, up from its previous projection of $225 billion to $250 billion.
“These fast-moving, wind-driven infernos have created one of the costliest wildfire disasters in modern U.S. history,” AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter said. “Hurricane-force winds sent flames ripping through neighborhoods filled with multi-million-dollar homes. The devastation left behind is heartbreaking, and the economic toll is staggering.”
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J.P. Morgan analysts last week projected that fire-related insured losses could climb as high as $20 billion. Meanwhile, a new analysis from Well Fargo Securities put that number at $30 billion and possibly even as high as $40 billion.
This comes amid an ongoing insurance crisis in California, where homeowners in fire-prone areas have been losing coverage in ever greater numbers over the past several years as major carriers like State Farm, Allstate, and Nationwide stopped writing new policies to mitigate risk.
Unable to find carriers willing to insure their properties, just under 500,000 Californians were forced to sign up for the Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) Plan, the state-sponsored insurer of last resort.
The wildfires burning in L.A. are expected to be the costliest in California’s history and are all but certain to worsen the already precarious insurance situation.
In a bid to mitigate the crisis, California’s insurance authority last week issued a yearlong ban on policy cancellations in areas impacted by the deadly Palisades and Eaton fires.
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