An Australian mother has spoken of how she tried in vain to save her blind son from the Los Angeles wildfires as water supplies ran dry.Shelley Sykes, a TV production entrepreneur, told Australian media of a desperate battle to save her 32-year-old son Rory, who had cerebral palsy.Wind-fanned wildfires have killed at least 24 people in Los Angeles, consuming communities and destroying homes. Sykes said on social media that she and her son lived on a 6.8-hectare (17-acre) estate in Malibu, a beachside city in Los Angeles County. Rory Sykes, who appeared in British TV show “Kiddy Kapers” in the 1990s, had his own self-contained cottage on the estate, she said.Her son was blind and had difficulty walking.”Rory’s feet with the heat had started to swell, and he couldn’t walk very well. And he also had problems with his tummy. So he didn’t want to be far away from the bathroom,” Sykes told Australia’s Channel Nine on Sunday.”So he said, ‘Mum, you go, I’m staying’.”Sykes said she could not leave her son alone on the estate.”I stayed in the main property with my two peacocks in a bathroom because it was hard to breathe. Sitting on the floor with bottled water and trying to keep wet.”Sykes said she saw embers on the roof of her son’s cottage and tried to extinguish them with a hose, but “there was no water coming out”. – ‘Devastated’ -She then drove to the closest fire station seeking help, but was told they, too, had no access to water. Water hydrants in some Los Angeles neighbourhoods ran dry during the initial effort to fight the blazes, sparking widespread anger among residents. Authorities told the Los Angeles Times newspaper that the water shortages occurred because the scale and duration of the firefighting effort were more than the city’s infrastructure was designed for.When the fire department took Sykes back to her property, she found the cottage had been reduced to “just black ash”.”There was nothing there,” she told Channel Nine.Sykes — who shared her birthday with her son — said she was overwhelmed by his death.”I am just devastated, it is unreal at the moment. I cannot breathe.”Fire authorities said he died from carbon monoxide poisoning, Sykes said.The stricken mother said she had been unable to remove her son from the danger.”I’ve got a broken arm. I couldn’t lift him. I couldn’t move him,” she said in a separate interview with Australia’s Channel 10.Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was aware of reports that an Australian man had died and was engaging closely with local authorities. The department said it was providing consular assistance to the man’s family, but was unable to comment further citing “privacy obligations”. 

Helping drive the wildfires in the US city of Los Angeles are the so-called Santa Ana winds, a weather phenomenon known to dry out “the hills and the nerves to flash point.”The windstorms occur when cold air gathers in the neighboring states of Nevada and Utah. As it moves west and then rushes down California’s mountains, it heats up — and dries out.- Creating fuel, spreading fires -The Santa Anas can both create the conditions for deadly wildfires and fuel them once they are underway — drying out vegetation when they blow through, and then fanning blazes once they spark.As the 23,700-acre (9,500-hectare) Palisades Fire and 14,000-acre Eaton Fire have raged around Los Angeles, fast-moving winds have exacerbated the situation, throwing hot embers into new patches of dried brush.While firefighters sought to take advantage of a brief lull on Friday and Saturday, heavy winds were back with gusts up to 70 miles per hour (110 kilometers per hour) by Sunday, with harsh conditions forecast to continue this week.- Cold air, hot winds -Santa Ana winds usually occur between September and May, typically for a few days at a time.When a high-pressure system forms over the deserts to California’s east, it pushes air toward the Pacific coast.As they move down the Santa Ana and Sierra Nevada mountains and shoot through valleys, the winds compress — creating a rise in their temperature and a drop in their relative humidity.With hot, dry gusts that can knock down trees or kick up dust and particulate matter, the winds have long caused problems in southern California.The 2017 Thomas Fire, which destroyed more than 1,000 structures, was fueled in part by back-to-back Santa Ana winds.- Frayed nerves -The Washington Post likened the weather pattern to “a giant hair dryer,” and writers have long noted the effect the winds seem to have on residents psychologically.American author Raymond Chandler once described them as so hot they “curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch.” For Joan Didion, they blew “sandstorms out along Route 66, drying the hills and nerves to flash point.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky offered assistance to wildfire-ravaged Los Angeles, saying Ukraine’s firefighters can “help Americans save lives” as the city struggles to combat new blazes. Deadly infernos have ripped through Los Angeles, killing at least 24 people in less than a week, reducing whole communities to scorched rubble and leaving thousands without homes. Conditions could dramatically worsen in the United States’ second-largest city as strong gusts fan flames and whip up embers, with firefighters warning the blazes could move from existing burn zones into new areas.Zelensky said Sunday evening that he had instructed Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs “to prepare for the possible participation of our rescuers in combating the wildfires in California”. “The situation there is extremely difficult, and Ukrainians can help Americans save lives,” he said in a video posted on social media platform X, adding the aid is “currently being coordinated”. “150 of our firefighters are already prepared.”The United States under President Joe Biden has been Kyiv’s biggest wartime backer, providing military aid worth more than $65 billion since Moscow’s invasion in February 2022.Incoming president-elect Donald Trump has promised to resolve the conflict in “24 hours” once in office, raising fears in Ukraine that it will be forced to make major concessions in exchange for peace.

A quarter century after its founding, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is finally ready for its maiden orbital voyage with a brand new rocket the company hopes will shake up the commercial space race. Named New Glenn after legendary astronaut John Glenn, it stands 320 feet (98 meters) tall, roughly equivalent to a 32-story building, and is set to blast off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in a launch window that opens at 1:00 am (0600 GMT) Monday.”Pointy end up!” the company’s CEO, Dave Limp posted on X alongside photos of the gleaming white behemoth.With the mission, dubbed NG-1, billionaire Amazon founder Bezos is taking aim at the only man in the world wealthier than him: Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX dominates the orbital launch market through its prolific Falcon 9 rockets, vital for the commercial sector, the Pentagon and NASA.”SpaceX has for the past several years been pretty much the only game in town, and so having a competitor… this is great,” G. Scott Hubbard, a retired senior NASA official, told AFP.SpaceX, meanwhile, is planning the next orbital test of Starship — its gargantuan new-generation rocket — this week, upping the high-stakes rivalry.- Landing attempt -Soon after launch, Blue Origin will attempt to land the first-stage booster on a drone ship named Jacklyn, in honor of Bezos’s mother, stationed about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) downrange in the Atlantic Ocean. Though SpaceX has long made such landings a near-routine spectacle, this will be Blue Origin’s first shot at a touchdown on the high seas.Meanwhile, the rocket’s upper stage will fire its engines toward Earth orbit, reaching a maximum altitude of roughly 12,000 miles above the surface.A Defense Department-funded prototype spaceship called Blue Ring will remain aboard for the roughly six-hour test flight. Blue Origin has experience landing its New Shepard rockets — used for suborbital tourism — but they are much smaller and land on terra firma rather than a ship at sea.Physically, New Glenn dwarfs the 230-foot Falcon 9 and is designed for heavier payloads. It slots between Falcon 9 and its big sibling, Falcon Heavy, in terms of mass capacity but holds an edge with its wider payload fairing, capable of carrying the equivalent of 20 moving trucks.- Slow v fast development -Blue Origin has already secured a NASA contract to launch two Mars probes aboard New Glenn. The rocket will also support the deployment of Project Kuiper, a satellite internet constellation designed to compete with Starlink.For now, however, SpaceX maintains a commanding lead, while other rivals — United Launch Alliance, Arianespace, and Rocket Lab — trail far behind.Like Musk, Bezos has a lifelong passion for space. But whereas Musk dreams of colonizing Mars, Bezos envisions shifting heavy industry off-planet onto floating space platforms in order to preserve Earth, “humanity’s blue origin.”He founded Blue Origin in 2000 — two years before Musk created SpaceX — but has adopted a more cautious pace, in contrast to his rival’s “fail fast, learn fast” philosophy.If New Glenn succeeds, it will give the US government “dissimilar redundancy” — valuable backup if one system fails, said Scott Pace, a space policy analyst at George Washington University.Musk’s closeness to President-elect Donald Trump has raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest, especially with private astronaut Jared Isaacman — a business associate of Musk — slated to become the next NASA chief.Bezos, however, has been making his own overtures, paying respect to his former foe during a visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, while Amazon has said it would donate $1 million to the inauguration committee.

Wildfire-ravaged Los Angeles on Sunday confronted the return of dangerous winds, as officials vowed firefighters were ready to combat any new blazes whipped up by furious gusts.At least 16 people have been confirmed dead from infernos that have ripped through the United States’ second-largest city for five days, reducing whole communities to scorched rubble and leaving thousands without homes.Despite massive firefighting efforts, the largest fire spread toward upscale Brentwood and the densely populated San Fernando Valley, as winds up to 50 miles (80 kilometers) per hour hit on Sunday.Conditions are set to dramatically worsen, with “extreme fire behavior and life threatening conditions” to peak with 70 mile per hour winds in a rare “particularly dangerous situation (PDS)” declared from early Tuesday, said National Weather Service meteorologist Rose Schoenfeld.These could fan flames and whip up embers from existing burn zones into new areas, firefighters warned.Los Angeles County Fire Department chief Anthony Marrone said his department had received resources including dozens of new water trucks and firefighters from far afield, and was primed to face the renewed threat.Questioned whether hydrants could run dry again, as they did during the initial outbreak of fires last week, Mayor Karen Bass replied: “I believe the city is prepared.”Frustration mounted as evacuees waited all day at disaster zone perimeters, hoping to be allowed to visit their homes and try to retrieve vital medication and pets.- Search for bodies -But Sheriff Robert Luna said escorts into these areas were being suspended Sunday with the return of high winds, dangerous conditions among the wreckage, and the need to retrieve victims’ bodies.Search-and-rescue operations for fatalities were only just beginning, and “as these searches continue, I unfortunately anticipate that those numbers will increase,” he said.Several more arrests of looters were made, including one burglar who had dressed as a firefighter to steal from homes. Nighttime curfews in evacuated zones have been extended, and additional National Guard resources have been requested. Prevented from entering an evacuation zone, Altadena resident Bobby Salman, 42, said: “I have to be there to protect my family, my wife, my kids, my mom and I cannot even go and see them.”In the ravaged Pacific Palisades neighborhood, a handwritten sign saying “looters will be shot” was hung on a tree outside a home, next to the US flag.The Palisades Fire grew overnight to 23,700 acres (9,500 hectares) burnt, and was just 11 percent contained.Video footage showed “fire tornadoes” — red-hot spirals that occur when a blaze is so intense it creates its own weather system.The ferocious fire also left streaks of molten metal flowing from burnt-out cars.But containment of the 14,000-acre Eaton Fire in Altadena almost doubled, new figures showed, with 27 percent of its perimeter controlled.The total number of residents under evacuation orders dropped to around 100,000, from a peak of almost 180,000.The sudden rush of people needing somewhere to live has posed a growing problem for the city, with reports of illegal price gouging from opportunistic landlords.”I’m back on the market with tens of thousands of people,” said a man who gave his name as Brian, whose rent-controlled apartment had burned. “That doesn’t bode well.”- ‘Worst catastrophes’ -President-elect Donald Trump has accused California officials of incompetence.”This is one of the worst catastrophes in the history of our Country. They just can’t put out the fires. What’s wrong with them?” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.Officials including Mayor Bass said they had not personally spoken with the incoming president, but that potential timings for Trump to visit the disaster scenes were being discussed.President Biden was due to meet key officials later Sunday for a briefing on efforts to suppress the wildfires, the White House said.A huge investigation by federal and local authorities was underway to determine what caused the blazes.California Governor Gavin Newsom told Meet the Press he was also launching a “Marshall Plan” as the city looks to rebuild.”We already have a team looking at reimagining L.A. 2.0,” he said.He also stressed the immediate problem of weather conditions, saying “the challenge is the winds. We’ve got these winds coming back this evening, Sunday night. We’ve got peak winds on Monday.”While the ignition of a wildfire can be deliberate, they are often natural, and a vital part of an environment’s life cycle.But urban sprawl puts people more frequently in harm’s way, and the changing climate — supercharged by humanity’s unchecked use of fossil fuels — is exacerbating the conditions that give rise to destructive blazes.