Firefighters battled early Thursday to control a series of major fires in the Los Angeles area that have killed five people, ravaged communities from the Pacific Coast to Pasadena and sent thousands of people frantically fleeing their homes.

Thousands of people have been forced to flee after "unprecedented" Palisades, Eaton and Hurst fires ravage Los Angeles County.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was in Southern California to attend the naming of a national monument by President Joe Biden, made a detour to the canyon to see “firsthand the impact of these swirling winds and the embers,” and he said he found “not a few — many structures already destroyed.”

Wildfires engulfing swaths of Los Angeles are expected to be one of the nation’s costliest natural disasters, with insurers potentially incurring losses of more than $10 billion.

The wind-driven wildfires burning out of control in the Los Angeles area couldn't have emerged at a more perilous moment for California's homeowners, as officials try to rehab what they concede is a deepening "insurance crisis.

Even before this week's wildfires in Los Angeles County, California was in the middle of an insurance crisis spurred by the threat of intensifying wildfires and other extreme weather events. Since 2022,

California had just set new rules for insurance companies, aimed at enticing insurers who had left the state, to return to the California market and resume writing policies for people in high-risk areas.

Key Takeaways The wildfires that have decimated neighborhoods in Los Angeles this week came just months after California's largest property insurer began allowing thousands of policies to lapse.Insurers,