Can Labour government usher in a new era of UK-Arab engagement?

The message for Labour’s Keir Starmer is that Britain’s sizable Muslim community has found its voice and its political power, and its support can no longer be taken for granted. (Reuters)
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Updated 09 July 2024
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Can Labour government usher in a new era of UK-Arab engagement?

  • Some experts think policy focus will shift from migration, counterextremism to Palestine, closer Gulf ties
  • Loud and clear election message is that support of Britain’s Muslim community cannot be taken for granted

LONDON: Before last Thursday, few British voters outside of the east London constituency of Ilford North had heard of Leanne Mohamad, the independent candidate running for election in the seat held by one of the Labour Party’s biggest names.

Mohamad’s name was no better known after the election, in which Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow health secretary, held on to the seat he had captured from the Conservatives in 2015.

But the success of the 23-year-old British-Palestinian in coming within a whisker of defeating Streeting was one of several warning shots fired across the bows of a Labour Party which has now woken up to the fact that the UK’s Muslim community might have an equal or even greater say in its chances of remaining in power for more than one term as the UK Jewish lobby, which the party has spent the past five years courting assiduously.

Streeting, who is now Labour’s new health secretary, squeezed back in by just 528 votes — 15,647 to Mohamad’s 15,119 — an unprecedented collapse of support over a single issue of foreign policy.

He was not the only senior party member who felt the wrath of the Muslim community and its supporters over Labour’s half-hearted stance on Gaza.




Labour’s new prime minister is on tricky ground over Gaza. (Reuters)

In the constituency of Holborn & St. Pancras, even Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s 2019 majority of 36,641 was slashed in half.

His chief opponent was another independent, Andrew Feinstein, a former South African politician and the son of a Holocaust survivor who criticized Starmer’s pre-election position on Gaza, having previously argued that the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is “a peaceful mechanism to weaken and thus force concessions from” an “apartheid Israel.”

Over 120 miles north in Birmingham Ladywood, long-serving Labour MP Shabana Mahmood, who secured 79 percent of the constituency’s votes in 2019, saw her majority cut in half and almost equaled by Akhmed Yakoob, yet another pro-Palestinian independent candidate.

In the neighboring constituency of Birmingham Yardley, Labour’s Jess Phillips saw her 2019 majority of 10,659 slashed to fewer than 700 votes by newcomer Jody McIntyre, running for the Workers Party.

Her setback came her November 2023 resignation from the shadow cabinet in protest over her party’s stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict, declaring she had to vote “with my constituents, my head, and my heart, which has felt as if it were breaking over the last four weeks with the horror of the situation in Israel and Palestine.”




The new health secretary, Wes Streeting, narrowly escaped defeat to Pro-Palestine independent Leanne Mohamad. (Reuters)

And they were the lucky ones. In 21 seats in the UK where more than one-fifth of the population is Muslim, Labour saw its share of the vote fall by 25 percent, and four MPs lost their seats to independents on pro-Gaza tickets.

The message for Labour, which has been received loud and clear, is that Britain’s sizable Muslim community has found its voice and its political power, and its support can no longer be taken for granted.

As Shabana Mahmood said after holding on to her Birmingham Ladywood seat, “we have bridges to rebuild … we have trust that we must earn back from my own community.”

There are already signs that Britain’s new government, whose program of social and economic reform is dependent upon securing a second term in office five years from now, is taking steps to do just that.

Starmer, whose wife is Jewish, inherited the leadership of the Labour Party in April 2020 from Jeremy Corbyn, a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause whose five years as leader were overshadowed by persistent accusations that the party he presided over was antisemitic — allegations that Corbyn and his supporters saw as an orchestrated campaign motivated by Labour’s support for Palestine.




Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, regained his seat as an independent candidate. (Reuters)

A report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the UK’s human rights watchdog, published in October 2020, concluded there were “serious failings in the Labour Party leadership in addressing antisemitism and an inadequate process for handling antisemitism complaints.”

The report had a Catch-22 air about it, concluding as it did that Labour’s protestations that the multiple accusations of antisemitism against it — from organizations including the Jewish Labour Movement, the Campaign Against Antisemitism and Jewish Voice for Labour — were manufactured smears, was, in itself, evidence of antisemitism.

Starmer set out to rebuild the trust of the Jewish community, declaring that he would “tear out this poison by its roots and judge success by the return of Jewish members.”

It seems to have worked. In the 2019 general election an estimated 11 percent of British Jews voted Labour; last Thursday it was closer to 50 percent.




Staremer, whose wife is Jewish, told The Guardian, “half of the family are Jewish, they’re either here or in Israel.” (AFP)

But Labour’s new prime minister is on tricky ground over Gaza. As he told The Guardian in an interview last month, “half of the family are Jewish, they’re either here or in Israel.”

Now that the election is over, and his party has been badly bruised at the ballot box by the perception that it has turned its back on the plight of the Palestinians, a cause traditionally close to Labour’s heart, Starmer faces the puzzle of how to retain UK Jewish support while bringing Muslims back on board.

“Labour has been very vocal about the need to counter antisemitism, and this now puts it in a very awkward position,” Kelly Petillo, program manager for the Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Arab News.

“On the one hand, they have portrayed themselves as the people who are going to clean up the Labour Party, but on the other they have to grapple with the reality that many independent candidates won because Labour’s stance on the war in Gaza was unsatisfactory for many.”

It is possible, she believes, that Labour will tread water on the issue of Gaza and the broader question of Palestinian statehood until the outcome of November’s presidential election in the US is settled.




Israel has been conducting a devestating military assault on the Gaza Strip since October last year. (AFP)

If, as seems increasingly likely, Donald Trump returns to the presidency, “there could well be alignment with the Trump administration, leading to a bias toward Israel, which is already evident in the nature of some of the candidates Labour selected to run in the election.”

For example, one of Labour’s new parliamentarians is Luke Akehurst, the MP for North Durham and former director of the pro-Israeli activist group We Believe in Israel, who has described Israel’s actions in Gaza as proportionate.

But for now, at least, the new UK government’s foreign policy is already showing signs of taking a turn for the pro-Palestinian.

Before the election, the then Conservative government had challenged the decision by the International Criminal Court to consider approving the chief prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants to be issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The UK questioned the ICC’s jurisdiction in the case, but the new Labour-led government has hinted it may withdraw the objection.




Israel’s military campaign in the Palestinian enclave has killed more than 35,000 people. (AFP)

The news leaked after two early calls to leaders in the region by Starmer. In one, he spoke to Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, expressing his concern about “the ongoing suffering and devastating loss of life” in Gaza, and restating the support for a Palestinian state that David Lammy, his foreign secretary, had already articulated.

Starmer’s other call was to Netanyahu. According to a Labour transcript, the new prime minister spoke of the “clear and urgent” need for a ceasefire in Gaza, adding that it was “also important to ensure the long-term conditions for a two-state solution were in place, including ensuring the Palestinian Authority had the financial means to operate effectively.”

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Starmer also urged the Israeli leader to act with caution in his dealings with Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border.

Meanwhile, Lammy has said that the Labour administration will reexamine legal advice given to the Conservative government that UK arms being sold to Israel were not being used in breach of international humanitarian law.

Lammy has also suggested the UK might reverse its decision to stop funding UNRWA, the UN’s Palestinian relief agency. In January, major donors to the agency, including the US, the EU, the UK and Germany, withdrew funding when it emerged that a dozen of UNRWA’s 30,000 Palestinian employees were suspected of having been involved in the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel.




Britain’s newly appointed Foreign Secretary David Lammy leaves Downing Street. (Reuters)

By April, most of this international funding had been restored and “the UK is now in the weird position where it is one of the few countries that has not restored UNRWA funding,” said Petillo.

Despite Lammy’s pronouncements, “I think Starmer is being advised internally to delay this as much as possible, keeping the UK in line with the US, which has blocked it until March 2025. This type of deflection is probably a tactic they will use to address some of the domestic tensions they are under.”

Because of this and other issues, UK policy in the Middle East “will continue to be dictated to a certain extent by US politics and the US line; you could argue that we won’t see a huge change from foreign policy in this area under the Conservatives.

“On the other hand, one can anticipate change just because the bar set by the Conservative government was so low, partly because of all the distractions they have faced, but also because of the narrow lens through which they have looked at Middle East policy, focused mostly on migration and countering extremism and, of course, through a reduction in aid budgets, which has affected countries like Yemen and Syria massively.”




Smoke billows during Israeli bombardment on the village of Khiam in south Lebanon near the border with Israel. (AFP)

Lammy has already made plain that Labour intends to reengage with the Middle East through a new policy of what he called “progressive realism,” and has also spoken of the need for the UK to mend relations with the Arab Gulf states.

This would be timely and highly welcome in the region, said Petillo.

“The UK has definitely shifted its attention a bit away from the region,” she said. “It was a big part of the international support for Ukraine and lately has been looking at the Gulf states solely through the narrow lens of energy.

FASTFACTS

• SR83.31bn Total Saudi-UK trade in goods and services in 2023.

• SR116.54bn Total UK-UAE trade in goods and services in 2023.

•SR37.56bn Total UK-Qatar trade in goods and services in 2023.

“This has really frustrated the Gulf countries, but Lammy has been traveling to the region, even before the war in Gaza, to address this grievance, and since then has been using the war as an opportunity to widen the conversation.

“There is a conversation right now among the Gulf states about building a regional security architecture, into which the process of Arab-Israeli normalization fits, and the new UK government is very keen to enter this conversation in a way that the Conservatives were not.”




Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party lost power in an election landslide to Labour. (Reuters)

The new UK government, Lina Khatib, director of the SOAS Middle East Institute and associate Fellow of the Chatham House Middle East and North Africa Program, told Arab News, “has the mandate to implement the needed foreign policy resets that the Labour party had prioritized ahead of the general election. Repairing relations with Arab countries in the Gulf and taking action toward a ceasefire in Gaza and resurrecting the Israel-Palestine peace process are two such priorities.”

According to Khatib, Labour has “rightly framed the Gulf as an important partner for security and economic growth.

“However, the UK government must pursue a more comprehensive strategy toward the Gulf which also takes into consideration the region’s geopolitical interests,” she said.

“This includes adopting a bold approach in addressing the destabilizing role of Iran and its proxies in the Middle East, which the previous UK government had merely skirted around.”




Labour will tread water on the issue of Gaza until the outcome of November’s presidential election in the US is settled, analyst Kelly Petillo indicated.

The UK “must also strengthen its diplomatic, cultural, and business engagement with the Middle East and North Africa. This will help nurture areas of growth across those sectors in the region and bolster the UK’s own standing.”The Labour Middle East Council, established in January this year by British politicians and former ambassadors to the region, with “the fundamental goal of cultivating understanding and fostering enduring relationships between UK parliamentarians and the Middle East & North Africa,” was “one avenue for facilitating such engagement.”

Two perspectives on a historic relationship


MIRAN HASSAN, Founder and director, Labour Middle East Council

It’s about treating the UK-Gulf relationship with more respect and giving it the attention that it deserves. For example, if you look at the GCC-UK Free Trade Agreement, those negotiations have been going on for years with no meaningful progress. That’s a very good example of where the relationship needs to be enhanced and given the attention that it deserves, considering the bloc is one of our largest trading partners.

Not enough attention was paid by the Conservatives to the GCC as a priority trading partner, and I’m hopeful and quite confident that’s going to change under this government.

This is no longer a world where the UK and the US are the only partners available. Now you can just go over to China, Russia is making strategic alliances, and so on. It’s now a world where the UK needs to actually fight to be a partner and for opportunities. It isn’t that the region wants to turn its back on the UK, but one that commands respect. And if they don't have the right level of engagement, then naturally they will look elsewhere.

What’s important for us at Labour Middle East Council is to have the region viewed through the lens of how interconnected our foreign policy is. So, when we look at the issue with the Houthis and their attacks, for example, how has that impacted global trade as a whole and our interests in other parts of the world?

Domestically, migration is a huge priority for the UK government, and we need to be engaged with the region that is the source of a lot of that migration, especially as climate change plays a bigger role and has a huge impact on many countries, such as Syria, Iraq and Libya.

BURCU OZCELIK, Senior Research Fellow (Middle East Security), RUSI

The Labour government has inherited status quo-altering challenges on multiple fronts in the Middle East. With the epicenter in Gaza, conflict vectors reach across Yemen and the Red Sea, Iraq, Syria, and notably with Lebanon-based Hezbollah, where the threat of an escalated war looms large.

While voting results show that Labour gained the trust of a sizeable portion of the British Jewish electorate, largely thanks to rejecting the Corbyn era’s polarizing policies to a more centrist approach, how Labour behaves both in its domestic response to voter expectations, and in its foreign-policy posture in the Middle East, will be scrutinized closely by Jewish and Muslim voters alike, who look to the new government to reduce the devastating human cost of the conflict.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy is set to emphasize the pledge enshrined in the Labour manifesto to recognize a Palestinian state as part of a peace process toward a two-state solution “with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state.” The issue is the extent to which Britain will play a proactive role in being pro-peace above all.

With the electoral campaign now behind us, voters will look to see tangible evidence that policies will match promises. This requires foregrounding a human-rights based approach equally all those civilians impacted, continuing to call for the immediate release of Israeli hostages held since Oct. 7, 2023, by Hamas, alongside pressure for a ceasefire, and urgent humanitarian aid to Palestinians. Unresolved issues will demand urgent attention, such as reviewing future means of funding that will permit the Palestinian Authority to govern effectively, legal concerns around UK arms sales, and the ICC’s ruling on Israel.

The Gulf states are poised — with the appropriate diplomatic assurances — to contribute to a necessary regional effort to support the rehabilitation, reconstruction and rebuilding of Gaza. Despite lulls and lags in the relationship, Labour now has an opportunity to engage with Gulf states (and societies) to facilitate a regional and sustained response to support Gaza, reassure Israel, and work toward the objective of Palestinian statehood.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right allies will seek to buy more time. Britain can apply pressure to bring an end to the humanitarian crisis and support mechanisms — with strong buy-in from the Arab states — to begin planning for the day after.

 


South Korea president says ‘not ruling out’ direct weapons to Ukraine

Updated 7 sec ago
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South Korea president says ‘not ruling out’ direct weapons to Ukraine

SEOUL: Major arms exporter South Korea is not ruling out providing weapons directly to Ukraine, President Yoon Suk Yeol said Thursday, signalling a possible shift in Seoul’s stance on the issue.
Yoon also revealed he had discussed North Korea with US president-elect Donald Trump in a phone conversation that laid the groundwork for a meeting in the “near future.”
South Korea has a long-standing policy of not providing weapons to countries in conflict but indicated that could change in light of Pyongyang’s deployment of troops to Russia to aid its war efforts in Ukraine.
“Now, depending on the level of North Korean involvement, we will gradually adjust our support strategy in phases,” Yoon said at a press conference in Seoul.
“This means we are not ruling out the possibility of providing weapons.”
North Korea has become one of the most vocal and important backers of Russia’s full-scale offensive in Ukraine.
Seoul and the West have long accused Pyongyang of supplying artillery shells and missiles to Moscow for use in Ukraine.
The latest accusations, based on intelligence reports, indicate the North has deployed around 10,000 troops to Russia, suggesting even deeper involvement in the conflict and triggering an outcry and warnings in Seoul, Kyiv, and Western capitals.
Yoon said his office would monitor unfolding developments related to the operations of North Korean soldiers, and if he decided to provide weapons to Kyiv, the initial batch would be defensive.
“If we proceed with weapons support, we would prioritize defensive weapons as a first consideration,” he said without elaborating further.
US-Korea relations
In a call with Trump that took place before the press briefing, Yoon said the two men had discussed a number of issues surrounding North Korea while agreeing to a face-to-face meeting.
“We agreed to meet in the near future... I believe there will be an opportunity to meet within this year,” Yoon said.
Among the topics discussed were recent moves by the North, including its sending of trash-carrying balloons southward, he said.
“Regarding North Korea, we addressed issues such as the launching of over 7,000 trash balloons, GPS jamming, and their indiscriminate firing of ICBMs, IRBMs and SRBMs,” Yoon said, referring to a recent flurry of missile tests.
Compared with his dovish predecessor Moon Jae-in, Yoon has taken a tough stance with the nuclear-armed North while improving ties with security ally Washington.
Since North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s second summit with then-president Trump collapsed in Hanoi in 2019, Pyongyang has abandoned diplomacy, doubling down on weapons development and rejecting Washington’s offers of talks.
While in office, Trump met with Kim three times, beginning with a landmark summit in Singapore in June 2018, though the pair failed to make much progress on efforts to denuclearise the North.
During the campaign, Trump said: “I think he misses me,” and that it was “nice to get along with somebody that has a lot of nuclear weapons.”
In a commentary released in July, North Korea said that while it was true Trump tried to reflect the “special personal relations” between the heads of states, he “did not bring about any substantial positive change.”

2024 ‘virtually certain’ to be hottest year on record: EU monitor

Updated 07 November 2024
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2024 ‘virtually certain’ to be hottest year on record: EU monitor

  • Copernicus said 2024 would likely be more than 1.55 degrees Celsius above the 1850-1900 average — the period before the industrial-scale burning of fossil fuels
  • Scientists say the safer 1.5C limit is rapidly slipping out of reach, while stressing that every tenth of a degree of temperature rise heralds progressively more damaging impacts

PARIS: This year is “virtually certain” to be the hottest in recorded history with warming above 1.5C, EU climate monitor Copernicus said Thursday, days before nations are due to gather for crunch UN climate talks.
The European agency said the world was passing a “new milestone” of temperature records that should serve to accelerate action to cut planet-heating emissions at the UN negotiations in Azerbaijan next week.
Last month, marked by deadly flooding in Spain and Hurricane Milton in the United States, was the second hottest October on record, with average global temperatures second only to the same period in 2023.
Copernicus said 2024 would likely be more than 1.55 degrees Celsius above the 1850-1900 average — the period before the industrial-scale burning of fossil fuels.
This does not amount to a breach of the Paris deal, which strives to limit global warming to below 2C and preferably 1.5C, because that is measured over decades and not individual years.
“It is now virtually certain that 2024 will be the warmest year on record and the first year of more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels,” said Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) Deputy Director Samantha Burgess.
“This marks a new milestone in global temperature records and should serve as a catalyst to raise ambition for the upcoming Climate Change Conference, COP29.”

The UN climate negotiations in Azerbaijan, which will set the stage for a new round of crucial carbon-cutting targets, will take place in the wake of the United States election victory by Donald Trump.
Trump, a climate change denier, pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement during his first presidency — and while his successor Joe Biden took the United States back in, he has threatened to do so again.
Meanwhile, average global temperatures have reached new peaks, as have concentrations of planet-heating gases in the atmosphere.
Scientists say the safer 1.5C limit is rapidly slipping out of reach, while stressing that every tenth of a degree of temperature rise heralds progressively more damaging impacts.
Last month the UN said the current pace of climate action would result in a catastrophic 3.1C of warming this century, while all current climate pledges taken in full would still amount to a devastating 2.6C temperature rise.
Global warming is not just about rising temperatures, but the knock-on effect of all the extra heat in the atmosphere and seas.
Warmer air can hold more water vapor, and warmer oceans mean greater evaporation, resulting in more intense downpours and storms.
In a month of weather extremes, October saw above-average rainfall across swathes of Europe, as well as parts of China, the US, Brazil and Australia, Copernicus said.
The US is also experiencing ongoing drought, which affected record numbers of people, the EU monitor added.
Copernicus said average sea surface temperatures in the area it monitors were the second highest on record for the month of October.
C3S uses billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft and weather stations to aid its calculations.
Copernicus records go back to 1940 but other sources of climate data such as ice cores, tree rings and coral skeletons allow scientists to expand their conclusions using evidence from much deeper in the past.
Climate scientists say the period being lived through right now is likely the warmest the earth has been for the last 100,000 years, back at the start of the last Ice Age.


US, China must ‘get along’, Xi tells Trump

Updated 25 min 13 sec ago
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US, China must ‘get along’, Xi tells Trump

  • Trump’s crushing presidential victory heralded a possible shift in US-China relations
  • Both Republican Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris had pledged to get tougher on Beijing

BEIJING: Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday said Beijing and Washington must find a way to “get along” in a message to US president-elect Donald Trump, state media said.
Trump’s crushing presidential victory heralded a new era of uncertainty in the United States and the world.
It also heralded a possible shift in US-China relations, frayed in recent years by tensions over everything from trade to the status of the self-ruled island of Taiwan.
In a congratulatory message to Trump, Xi “pointed out that history has shown that China and the United States benefit from cooperation and suffer from confrontation,” state broadcaster CCTV said.
“A stable, healthy and sustainable China-US relationship is in the common interest of both countries and is in line with the expectations of the international community,” Xi said.
He called for Washington and Beijing to “strengthen dialogue and communication” and “properly manage differences.”
The two countries must “find a correct way... to get along in this new era, to benefit both countries and the world,” Xi said.
Both Republican Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris had pledged to get tougher on Beijing.
But Trump upped the ante, vowing to slap 60-percent tariffs on all Chinese goods entering the United States.
That proposal could hit $500 billion worth of Chinese exports, asset managers PineBridge Investments have suggested.
In his first message to Trump since the former president secured a second term in office, Chinese leader Xi said he hoped “that both sides will uphold the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation.”
Chinese Vice President Han Zheng also sent a message to vice president-elect JD Vance, CCTV said.


Record drought in Amazon impacts 420,000 children: UNICEF

Updated 07 November 2024
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Record drought in Amazon impacts 420,000 children: UNICEF

RIO DE JANEIRO: More than 420,000 children in the Amazon basin are being badly affected by a drought parching much of South America that is impacting water supplies and river transport, UNICEF said Wednesday.
The record-breaking drought is taking a toll on Indigenous and other communities in Brazil, Colombia and Peru reliant on boat connections, the UN agency said.
“We are witnessing the devastation of an essential ecosystem that families rely on, leaving many children without access to adequate food, water, health care and schools,” UNICEF chief Catherine Russell said in a statement.
The resulting food insecurity increased the risk of child malnutrition, the agency said, while less access to drinking water could spur a rise in infectious diseases.
In Brazil’s Amazon region alone, more than 1,700 schools and more than 760 medical clinics had to close or became inaccessible because of low river levels.
In Colombia’s Amazon, lack of drinking water and food forced 130 schools to suspend classes. In Peru, more than 50 clinics were inaccessible.
UNICEF said it needs $10 million in coming months to help the stricken communities in those three countries, including by providing water and sending out health brigades.
Weather observation agencies such as NASA’s Earth Observatory and the EU’s Copernicus service say the drought across the Amazon basin since the latter half of last year was caused by the 2023-2024 El Nino climate phenomenon in the Pacific.
Brazilian experts said the climate crisis was also to blame.
The insufficient rain and shrinking of the vital rainforest’s rivers exacerbated forest fires, disrupted hydroelectric power generation and dried out crops in parts of Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.


Thousands ordered to evacuate as powerful wind-fed wildfire burns homes in Southern California

Updated 07 November 2024
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Thousands ordered to evacuate as powerful wind-fed wildfire burns homes in Southern California

CAMARILLO, California: California was lashed by powerful winds Wednesday that fed a fast-moving wildfire, which destroyed dozens of homes and forced thousands of residents to flee as forecasters warned of the potential for “extreme and life-threatening” blazes.
Northwest of Los Angeles, the Mountain Fire exploded in size and prompted evacuation orders for more than 10,000 people as it threatened 3,500 structures in suburban communities, ranches and agricultural areas around Camarillo, according to a statement from Gov. Gavin Newsom. He said he has requested federal assistance for the area east of the Pacific coast city of Ventura.
The blaze was burning in a region that has seen some of California’s most destructive fires over the years. A thick plume of smoke rose hundreds of feet into the sky Wednesday, blanketing whole neighborhoods and limiting visibility for firefighters and evacuees. The fire grew from less than half of a square mile to 16 square miles (62 square kilometers) in little more than five hours.
Ventura County Fire Captain Trevor Johnson described crews racing with their engines to homes threatened by the flames to save lives.
“This is as intense as it gets. The hair on the back of the firefighters’ neck I’m sure was standing up,” he said during a news conference Wednesday afternoon.
At one spot, flames licked the burning remains of a home. Its roof was reduced to only a few charred shingles.
Two people suffered apparent smoke inhalation and were taken to hospitals, fire officials said. No firefighters reported significant injuries.
The erratic winds and limited visibility grounded fixed-wing aircraft, and gusts topped 61 mph (98 kph), said weather service meteorologist Bryan Lewis. Water-dropping helicopters were still flying.
First responders pleaded with residents to evacuate. Deputies made contact with 14,000 people to urge them to leave as embers spread up to 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) away and sparked new flames.
“This fire is moving dangerously fast,” Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner said.
Aerial footage from local television networks showed dozens of homes in flames across several neighborhoods as embers were whipped from home to home. Other footage captured horses trotting alongside evacuating vehicles.
Jade Katz, who said she is disabled and does not drive, waited for a friend to pick her up near her Camarillo Heights home with a suitcase full of medication and Bella, her Great Dane service dog. But the friend couldn’t reach her, so first responders sent a squad car to escort her to safety as she watched the neighborhood burn.
Officials said they were using all resources, including water-dropping helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft dropping fire retardant, but it was still burning out of control Wednesday afternoon. Andrew Dowd, a Ventura County fire spokesperson, said he did not have details of how many structures had been damaged.
Gus Garcia, who owns a ranch south of the fire, said he’s waiting to see whether conditions will change to decide if he should evacuate his horses and cattle. Around 12:30 p.m., his animals were still safe and he was trying to stay out of the way as others got their livestock out.
His ranch is surrounded by others with horses and alpaca, and Garcia said his neighbors in the canyon did not seem panicked.
“The horse community, they prepare for this because it’s always a possibility up here,” he said.
Meanwhile to the south, Los Angeles County Fire Department crews scrambled to contain a wildfire near Malibu’s Broad Beach as authorities briefly shut down the Pacific Coast Highway as flames burned near multimillion-dollar properties. Residents were urged to shelter in place while aircraft dropped water on the 50-acre (20-hectare) Broad Fire. It was 15 percent contained around 12:30 p.m. with forward progress stopped. Fire officials said two structures burned.
The National Weather Service office for the Los Angeles area amended its red flag warning for increased fire danger with a rare “particularly dangerous situation” label, and officials in several counties urged residents to be on watch for fast-spreading blazes, power outages and downed trees amid the latest round of notorious Santa Ana winds.
With predicted gusts between 50 mph (80 kph) and 100 mph (160 kph) and humidity levels as low as 8 percent, parts of Southern California could experience conditions ripe for “extreme and life-threatening” fire behavior into Thursday, the weather service said.
Forecasters also issued red flag warnings until Thursday from California’s central coast through the San Francisco Bay Area and into counties to the north, where strong winds were also expected.
Utilities in California began powering down equipment during high winds and extreme fire danger after a series of massive and deadly wildfires in recent years were sparked by electrical lines and other infrastructure. On Wednesday, more than 65,000 customers in Southern California were without power preventatively, and upwards of 20,000 in Northern California.
Wednesday’s fires were burning in the same areas of other recent destructive fires, including the 2018 Woolsey Fire, which killed three people and destroyed 1,600 homes near Los Angeles, and the the 2017 Thomas Fire, which destroyed more than a thousand homes and other structures in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Southern California Edison has paid tens of millions of dollars to settle claims after its equipment was blamed for both blazes.