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Governor of California Gavin Newsom speaks next to U.S. President Donald Trump upon Trump's arrival to tour areas impacted or destroyed by the southern California wildfires, at Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California, on Jan. 24, 2025.
Hard Numbers: California calls for help, Kenyan killed in Haiti, Trump tariffs to hit Canada soon, Apple to invest big, DRC casualties, An exit from Brexit
40 billion: California Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked Congress to approve nearly$40 billion in aid to help the Los Angeles area recover from January’s wildfires. Total economic losses from the firestorm have been estimated above $250 billion.
1: A Kenyan police officer was killed on Sunday in Haiti, north of Port-au-Prince. This is thefirst casualty since the Kenyan-led security mission arrived on a mission to stabilize Haiti in June 2024.
25: Been wondering what happened to Donald Trump’s threat to impose huge tariffs on Canada? Well, the US president said Monday the plan for 25% tariffs on most Canadian goods is still very much alive and will start next week. Trump said work on their implementation was “moving along very rapidly.”
500 billion: Apple said Monday it willinvest $500 billion to expand its US facilities over the next four years, a move the company says will create 20,000 jobs. Earlier this month, President Donald Trump announced tariffs of 10% on all imports from China, from which Apple imports many products. Trump attributed the investment to his tariffs.
7,000: Judith Suminwa, prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, told a meeting of the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday that about7,000 people have died since January in fighting in the eastern part of the country. That figure includes both combatants and civilians.
15: Applications by Britons for Irish citizenship hit a post-Brexit high last year as a growing number of workers and pensioners tried to gain “backdoor” access into the EU. British applications to the Foreign Births Register, a citizenship route for people with Irish grandparents or parents,jumped 15% in 2024 to 23,456.
Firefighters attempt to extinguish a fire in a home along the Pacific Coast Highway in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood.
Hard Numbers on the LA wildfires: From evacuations and deaths to estimated losses and insurance woes. Plus: Inmate firefighters
180,000: At least 180,000 people have been ordered to evacuate and an additional 200,000 face evacuation warnings. At least 10 people have been killed, but the death toll is expected to rise, and 20 people have been arrested on suspicion of looting.
9,000: A whopping 9,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed, including the homes of many notable celebrities, such as Paris Hilton, Billy Crystal, Adam Brody, and Eugene Levy.
10 billion: Preliminary insurance estimates suggest losses to the tune of $10 billion. The average home price in the Palisades area is $3.5 million and $1.25 million in the region affected by the Eaton fire. The economic loss estimate could be as high as $57 billion for the region.
30,000: In March 2024, State Farm informed 30,000 policyholders across California that it would not renew their insurance because they lived in areas that “present the most substantial wildfire or fire following earthquake hazards.” This included many homes in the Westside region of Los Angeles, as well as 1,600 policyholders in Pacific Palisades. Both State Farm and Allstate had already stopped issuing home insurance policies to new customers in the statein 2023. Smaller insurers may fill some gaps, however, with independent home insurer Mercury Insurance announcing Tuesday that it would write new home insurance policies in the town of Paradise, which was destroyed by the Camp Fire in 2018.
0.16: Thirty percent of firefighters in California are prison inmates who earn between $0.16 to $0.74 an hour or a maximum day rate of $5.80 to $10.24, plus a $4 daily food budget. They are tasked with cutting underbrush and vegetation to starve fires of fuel. While the inmates are volunteers, their ultra-low-wage labor is permitted under the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, which reads, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Firefighters battle the Palisades Fire as it burns during a windstorm on the west side of Los Angeles, California, on Jan. 8, 2025.
War of words as LA burns
Out-of-control wildfires are devastating southern California, which, in the hyperpolarized political world of 2025, has resulted in a war of words between Republicans and Democrats.
The fires are without precedent, the result of a warming climate, residential development in woodlands, decades of fire suppression that have left a lot of dead trees and dry grass, and powerful Santa Ana winds.
Whatever the cause, the blazes are dire. Tens of thousands have been evacuated from greater Los Angeles as multiple fires burn out of control. At least five people have been killed, and hundreds of buildings have been left in smoldering ruins.
President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Muskseized on the occasion to attack California Gov. Gavin Newsom, accusing him of being behind environmental restrictions that have prevented dams from being built. Newsom — or “Newscum,” as Trump calls him — has put a lot of money into forest management since Trump first accused him of creating conditions for wildfires back in 2019, but the high winds and heat made the fires unstoppable. Newsom has hit back, accusing Trump of playing politics at a time when leaders should be focused on managing the imminent threat.
The fires, and the war of words, are unlikely to end any time soon, but the bigger fight lies ahead, after Trump’s inauguration, when Democrats and Republicans are likely to clash over FEMA, which Trump has criticized, and forest management policies.