Wildfires that have swept the Los Angeles area earlier this month are continuing to affect the lives of the locals as tens of thousands Californian residents have been evacuated.
Panic ensued on Wednesday as yet another blaze, the Hughes Fire, erupted, prompting evacuation orders for 50,000 people.
The most recent fire has decimated more than 41 square kilometres of forest and follows the Los Angeles Fire Department’s efforts to tackle ongoing blazes in Eaton and Palisades for a third week – though they are said to be largely contained.
Following many reports of wildfires across the globe last year, with many occurring in Greece, what are some of the areas of the world that have already been affected in 2025?
Where have there been wildfires in 2025 so far?
Emergency vehicles are on the side of the road as flames from the Hughes Fire race up the hill in Castaic, a northwestern neighborhood of Los Angeles
AFP via Getty Images
Despite hoping conditions would edge towards normalcy in the first couple of days of the wildfires, the blazes have claimed at least 28 lives and wreaked havoc on the infrastructure.
The blazes were fuelled by fierce Santa Ana winds, however, a cause for the fires has yet to be determined, with many theories pointing to a reignition of a New Year’s Eve blaze and climate change.
Firefighters in Australia were also hard at work earlier this month to bring freshly sparked bushfires under control amid the heatwave in Victoria, where a team responded to an alert about the blaze one afternoon in the state’s central goldfields region.
Reports of the fire came as parts of Australia’s southeast region were left sweltering through the third day of the scorching conditions.
Residents were advised to update themselves on what was happening to ensure they stayed safe as crews worked to control fires west of Bendigo and north of Ballarat.
Victoria State Control Centre spokesperson Reegan Key told a local news source: “People will notice the cloud cover today a bit more, and that creates more tricky conditions for firefighters,” she said.
“Where we already have fires in the landscape, sometimes the winds can be a bit difficult, but equally there is potential for lightning across the state so we might see some new starts.”
