LOS ANGELES: A rapidly growing wildfire raged across an upscale section of Los Angeles on Tuesday, destroying homes and creating traffic jams as 30,000 people evacuated beneath huge plumes of smoke that covered much of the metropolitan area.
At least 2,921 acres (1,182 hectares) of the Pacific Palisades area between the coastal settlements of Santa Monica and Malibu had burned, officials said, after they had already warned of extreme fire danger from powerful winds that arrived following extended dry weather.
The fire spread as officials warned the worst wind conditions were expected to come overnight, leading to concerns that more neighborhoods could be forced to flee. The city of Santa Monica later ordered evacuations in the northern fringe of town.
Witnesses reported a number homes on fire with flames nearly scorching their cars when people fled the hills of Topanga Canyon, as the fire spread from there down to the Pacific Ocean.
“We feel very blessed at this point that there’s no injuries that are reported,” Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley told a press conference, adding that more than 25,000 people in 10,000 homes were threatened.
Firefighters in aircraft scooped water from the sea to drop it on the nearby flames. Flames engulfed homes and bulldozers cleared abandoned vehicles from roads so emergency vehicles could pass, television images showed.
As the sun set over Los Angeles, towering orange flames illuminated the hills leading to Topanga Canyon.
The fire singed some trees on the grounds of the Getty Villa, a museum loaded with priceless works of art, but the collection remained safe largely because of preventive efforts to trim brush surrounding the buildings, the museum said.
With only one major road leading from the canyon to the coast, and only one coastal highway leading to safety, traffic crawled to a halt, leading people to flee on foot.
Cindy Festa, a Pacific Palisades resident, said that as she evacuated out of the canyon, fires were “this close to the cars,” demonstrating with her thumb and forefinger.
“People left their cars on Palisades Drive. Burning up the hillside. The palm trees — everything is going,” Festa said from her car.
Before the fire started, the National Weather Service had issued its highest alert for extreme fire conditions for much of Los Angeles County from Tuesday through Thursday, predicting wind gusts of 50 to 80 mph (80 to 130 kph).
With low humidity and dry vegetation due to a lack of rain, the conditions were “about as bad as it gets in terms of fire weather,” the Los Angeles office of the National Weather Service said on X.
Governor Gavin Newsom, who declared a state of emergency, said the state positioned personnel, firetrucks and aircraft elsewhere in Southern California because of the fire danger to the wider region, he added.
“Hopefully, we’re wrong, but we’re anticipating other fires happening concurrently,” Newsom told the press conference.
A second blaze dubbed the Eaton Fire later broke out some 30 miles (50 km) inland in the foothills above Pasadena, consuming 200 acres (80 hectares), Cal Fire said.
The powerful winds changed President Joe Biden’s travel plans, grounding Air Force One in Los Angeles. He had planned to make a short flight inland to the Coachella Valley for a ceremony to create two new national monuments in California but the event was rescheduled for a later date at the White House.
“I have offered any federal assistance that is needed to help suppress the terrible Pacific Palisades fire,” Biden said in statement. A federal grant had already been approved to help reimburse the state of California for its fire response, Biden said.
Pacific Palisades is home to several Hollywood stars. Actor James Woods said on X he was able to evacuate but added, “I do not know at this moment if our home is still standing.”
Actor Steve Guttenberg told KTLA television that friends of his were impeded from evacuating because others had abandoned their cars in the road.
“It’s really important for everybody to band together and don’t worry about your personal property. Just get out,” Guttenberg said. “Get your loved ones and get out.”
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Wildfire rages in Los Angeles, forcing 30,000 to evacuate
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Wildfire rages in Los Angeles, forcing 30,000 to evacuate
- Wildfire forces 30,000 evacuations in upscale Los Angeles area
- Evacuations cause traffic jams, residents flee on foot
No news, no body: parents of Guinea’s missing migrants face torment
CONAKRY: Abdoul Aziz Balde sobbed as he spoke of his son Idrissa, who left Guinea in search of a better future, but has not been heard from since capsizing off the Moroccan coast.
“I know that the boat my son was on sank, but we haven’t been shown his body, so to say that the boy is dead, I just don’t know,” the desperate father told AFP.
Thousands of young undocumented migrants in Guinea have disappeared along migration routes in recent years, leaving their families in a state of uncertainty and helplessness.
Although it affects families across west Africa, the problem is particularly bad in Guinea, which has become one of the main departure points for those heading to North Africa and Europe.
One day they are in touch; the next seemingly gone forever.
Some disappear after boarding overcrowded boats, others after crossing the desert with smugglers who have been known to abandon migrants.
Still others have gone missing following police raids in North Africa, due to imprisonment in Libya or even once in Europe, disappearing voluntarily out of shame over having failed in their dream.
Families are left to scour Facebook or watch macabre WhatsApp clips showing young people in morgues or corpses after shipwrecks.
The Guinean Organization for the Fight Against Irregular Migration (OGLMI) has pioneered a way to help families by collaborating with migrant aid associations around the world over the last year.
The NGO estimates the number of missing Guineans to be in the thousands.
“Out of 100 migrants who leave, at least 10 will never return,” OGLMI executive director Elhadj Mohamed Diallo told AFP.
“People have been missing for a long time but the issue has never been discussed at the civil society, government or international institution level,” he said.
AFP accompanied Diallo as he navigated the streets of a Conakry suburb on his motorcycle to visit the parents of Idrissa, who disappeared more than a year ago.
- ‘Left to save us’ -
The Balde family lives in a house shared with other tenants where the poverty is striking.
With every family, it is the same ritual when Diallo visits: Idrissa’s parents scrolled through WhatsApp to find the last virtual trace of their child.
One of the last photos was a smiling selfie.
“He left to save us, and to save his little sister. But God didn’t want it to be,” Balde, a 62-year-old driver, said, breaking down in tears.
Despite being bright at school, Idrissa — who would now be 29 years old — saw no opportunity in Guinea, a recurring theme among many young people.
From 2023, he made three unsuccessful attempts to migrate to Europe, reaching as far as Morocco. Each time, his father tried to stop him.
Last year, his parents financed his Master’s studies in Senegal, but he was lured by others who did manage to reach Europe and left for Morocco again.
In August last year, his father received a fateful phone call: “Are you Mr.Balde? Do you have a son who is in Morocco?” the voice on the other end asked. “My deepest condolences. They boarded small boats... they drowned.”
Balde said he was “devastated” and had to break the news to his wife. “The whole family wept,” he told AFP.
They were able to contact a young girl on the same boat but she had lost consciousness when they were hit by a wave and did not see what happened to Idrissa.
“Is he dead? Is he not dead?” Balde asked, his voice filled with anguish.
- ‘Abandoned’ -
Between 2014 and 2025, at least 33,220 migrants died or went missing in the Mediterranean and 17,768 in Africa, according to the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project.
However, the figures are likely underestimated. In 2024 alone, the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras recorded 10,457 people dead or missing at sea on the western European-Africa border.
Guinean researcher Mahmoud Kaba is working on a study to shed light on “the large-scale phenomenon” of families who have lost loved ones during attempts to migrate from Guinea.
Some “suffer strokes upon hearing the news, others experience insomnia and amnesia,” he told AFP.
Families feel isolated due to increasingly restrictive border policies and controls in Europe, general indifference and the criminalization of migrants.
Abdoulaye Diallo, 67, told AFP he felt “abandoned.” His eldest son Abdou Karim, who would now be aged 25, went missing two years ago.
“He stopped communicating with me in March 2023 which was unusual for him and that’s when the worry set in,” Diallo said.
The family found some of Abdou’s last traces of life on Facebook.
He had already left once, in 2018, barely aged 18, reaching Morocco, Tunisia and Libya, where he was imprisoned, but ended up back in Conakry.
On a second attempt, while working in Rabat he told a friend he was leaving for Tangier and then on to Spain.
Just east of Tangier, the massive Gourougou forest has become a base for thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa seeking to enter the nearby Spanish enclave of Melilla illegally.
Moroccan authorities often carry out raids to dislodge them.
“There is violence against migrants in Morocco, especially from the security forces. It’s a country where lives are senselessly lost,” Diallo said, breaking down in tears.
One of Abdou’s brothers said he received information that he was in a detention center in the Tangier region.
Diallo said he tried to contact the authorities to inform the Guinean embassy in Morocco but had received no news.
There is “no shame” in being the parents of a young migrant who has gone missing, he stressed.
“It’s a wind that has swept through every home in Africa because of bad governance,” he said.
- ‘Political failure’ -
OGLMI has set up WhatsApp groups in local languages to connect Guinean families, as well as a support group.
Even when relatives try to report their child’s disappearance, there is often no follow-up, Diallo said.
Guinea’s ruling junta, which took power in 2020, is reluctant to allow public discussion of illegal migration.
“Admitting that we are losing our citizens at sea is also admitting a political failure and that we are not doing enough for our citizens,” Kaba, the researcher, said.
But head of the Directorate General for Guineans Living Abroad Mamadou Saitiou Barry told AFP that the term “disappeared” should be used with “great caution.”
He said there were “many situations” other than death that could cause a migrant to disappear.
They include “those who have not succeeded and refuse to communicate, those who are hospitalized, those who are under arrest or detained,” the director general said.
He added that Guinean authorities had helped families of shipwreck victims that they know about, often the few that gain media attention.
“Families have the right to the truth and to file a complaint, the missing have the right to be searched for, and the deceased have the right to be buried with dignity,” Helena Maleno, founder of Caminando Fronteras, told AFP.
“But getting states to recognize this is very complicated,” she said.
After receiving a report of a disappearance, OGLMI contacts relatives and creates an identification file, including the migration route.
The information is transmitted to associations in North Africa and Europe and to activists as far away as Mexico, Argentina and the United States.
The search might even involve visiting unmarked graves in the migrant sections of cemeteries or morgues.
- ‘Must not forget’ -
Some families do manage to trace their loved one, such as Tahibou Diallo, 58, who had no news of her son Thierno for two years.
AFP went along with OGLMI’s Diallo when he met Tahibou for the first time.
The mother became visibly distraught as she recounted how she had helped fund Thierno’s journey to Spain.
“He told me he was going to study there,” she said, explaining he instead went to France then disappeared.
In October, OGLMI was able to locate the young man, alive but homeless in the western city of Nantes.
He was not doing well but his mother was able to speak to him and re-establish contact.
However, other families who have sought the NGO’s help are still without news after more than a year. “These families must be helped to grieve,” Diallo said.
“We must not forget all these missing people.”
“I know that the boat my son was on sank, but we haven’t been shown his body, so to say that the boy is dead, I just don’t know,” the desperate father told AFP.
Thousands of young undocumented migrants in Guinea have disappeared along migration routes in recent years, leaving their families in a state of uncertainty and helplessness.
Although it affects families across west Africa, the problem is particularly bad in Guinea, which has become one of the main departure points for those heading to North Africa and Europe.
One day they are in touch; the next seemingly gone forever.
Some disappear after boarding overcrowded boats, others after crossing the desert with smugglers who have been known to abandon migrants.
Still others have gone missing following police raids in North Africa, due to imprisonment in Libya or even once in Europe, disappearing voluntarily out of shame over having failed in their dream.
Families are left to scour Facebook or watch macabre WhatsApp clips showing young people in morgues or corpses after shipwrecks.
The Guinean Organization for the Fight Against Irregular Migration (OGLMI) has pioneered a way to help families by collaborating with migrant aid associations around the world over the last year.
The NGO estimates the number of missing Guineans to be in the thousands.
“Out of 100 migrants who leave, at least 10 will never return,” OGLMI executive director Elhadj Mohamed Diallo told AFP.
“People have been missing for a long time but the issue has never been discussed at the civil society, government or international institution level,” he said.
AFP accompanied Diallo as he navigated the streets of a Conakry suburb on his motorcycle to visit the parents of Idrissa, who disappeared more than a year ago.
- ‘Left to save us’ -
The Balde family lives in a house shared with other tenants where the poverty is striking.
With every family, it is the same ritual when Diallo visits: Idrissa’s parents scrolled through WhatsApp to find the last virtual trace of their child.
One of the last photos was a smiling selfie.
“He left to save us, and to save his little sister. But God didn’t want it to be,” Balde, a 62-year-old driver, said, breaking down in tears.
Despite being bright at school, Idrissa — who would now be 29 years old — saw no opportunity in Guinea, a recurring theme among many young people.
From 2023, he made three unsuccessful attempts to migrate to Europe, reaching as far as Morocco. Each time, his father tried to stop him.
Last year, his parents financed his Master’s studies in Senegal, but he was lured by others who did manage to reach Europe and left for Morocco again.
In August last year, his father received a fateful phone call: “Are you Mr.Balde? Do you have a son who is in Morocco?” the voice on the other end asked. “My deepest condolences. They boarded small boats... they drowned.”
Balde said he was “devastated” and had to break the news to his wife. “The whole family wept,” he told AFP.
They were able to contact a young girl on the same boat but she had lost consciousness when they were hit by a wave and did not see what happened to Idrissa.
“Is he dead? Is he not dead?” Balde asked, his voice filled with anguish.
- ‘Abandoned’ -
Between 2014 and 2025, at least 33,220 migrants died or went missing in the Mediterranean and 17,768 in Africa, according to the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project.
However, the figures are likely underestimated. In 2024 alone, the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras recorded 10,457 people dead or missing at sea on the western European-Africa border.
Guinean researcher Mahmoud Kaba is working on a study to shed light on “the large-scale phenomenon” of families who have lost loved ones during attempts to migrate from Guinea.
Some “suffer strokes upon hearing the news, others experience insomnia and amnesia,” he told AFP.
Families feel isolated due to increasingly restrictive border policies and controls in Europe, general indifference and the criminalization of migrants.
Abdoulaye Diallo, 67, told AFP he felt “abandoned.” His eldest son Abdou Karim, who would now be aged 25, went missing two years ago.
“He stopped communicating with me in March 2023 which was unusual for him and that’s when the worry set in,” Diallo said.
The family found some of Abdou’s last traces of life on Facebook.
He had already left once, in 2018, barely aged 18, reaching Morocco, Tunisia and Libya, where he was imprisoned, but ended up back in Conakry.
On a second attempt, while working in Rabat he told a friend he was leaving for Tangier and then on to Spain.
Just east of Tangier, the massive Gourougou forest has become a base for thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa seeking to enter the nearby Spanish enclave of Melilla illegally.
Moroccan authorities often carry out raids to dislodge them.
“There is violence against migrants in Morocco, especially from the security forces. It’s a country where lives are senselessly lost,” Diallo said, breaking down in tears.
One of Abdou’s brothers said he received information that he was in a detention center in the Tangier region.
Diallo said he tried to contact the authorities to inform the Guinean embassy in Morocco but had received no news.
There is “no shame” in being the parents of a young migrant who has gone missing, he stressed.
“It’s a wind that has swept through every home in Africa because of bad governance,” he said.
- ‘Political failure’ -
OGLMI has set up WhatsApp groups in local languages to connect Guinean families, as well as a support group.
Even when relatives try to report their child’s disappearance, there is often no follow-up, Diallo said.
Guinea’s ruling junta, which took power in 2020, is reluctant to allow public discussion of illegal migration.
“Admitting that we are losing our citizens at sea is also admitting a political failure and that we are not doing enough for our citizens,” Kaba, the researcher, said.
But head of the Directorate General for Guineans Living Abroad Mamadou Saitiou Barry told AFP that the term “disappeared” should be used with “great caution.”
He said there were “many situations” other than death that could cause a migrant to disappear.
They include “those who have not succeeded and refuse to communicate, those who are hospitalized, those who are under arrest or detained,” the director general said.
He added that Guinean authorities had helped families of shipwreck victims that they know about, often the few that gain media attention.
“Families have the right to the truth and to file a complaint, the missing have the right to be searched for, and the deceased have the right to be buried with dignity,” Helena Maleno, founder of Caminando Fronteras, told AFP.
“But getting states to recognize this is very complicated,” she said.
After receiving a report of a disappearance, OGLMI contacts relatives and creates an identification file, including the migration route.
The information is transmitted to associations in North Africa and Europe and to activists as far away as Mexico, Argentina and the United States.
The search might even involve visiting unmarked graves in the migrant sections of cemeteries or morgues.
- ‘Must not forget’ -
Some families do manage to trace their loved one, such as Tahibou Diallo, 58, who had no news of her son Thierno for two years.
AFP went along with OGLMI’s Diallo when he met Tahibou for the first time.
The mother became visibly distraught as she recounted how she had helped fund Thierno’s journey to Spain.
“He told me he was going to study there,” she said, explaining he instead went to France then disappeared.
In October, OGLMI was able to locate the young man, alive but homeless in the western city of Nantes.
He was not doing well but his mother was able to speak to him and re-establish contact.
However, other families who have sought the NGO’s help are still without news after more than a year. “These families must be helped to grieve,” Diallo said.
“We must not forget all these missing people.”
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