Many watched their homes burn on tele­vi­sion in a state of shock.

Since the flames erupt­ed in and around Los An­ge­les, scores of res­i­dents have re­turned to their still smoul­der­ing neigh­bour­hoods even as the threat of new fires per­sist­ed and the na­tion’s sec­ond-largest city re­mained un­set­tled. For some, it was a first look at the stag­ger­ing re­al­i­ty of what was lost as the re­gion of 13 mil­lion peo­ple grap­ples with the gar­gan­tu­an chal­lenge of over­com­ing the dis­as­ter and re­build­ing.

Calmer winds en­abled fire­fight­ers to start gain­ing some con­trol of the biggest blazes in met­ro­pol­i­tan LA on Fri­day be­fore gusty weath­er re­turns over the week­end to an area that hasn’t seen rain in more than eight months. But by Fri­day evening, new evac­u­a­tions were or­dered in an area that in­cludes part of In­ter­state 405 af­ter a flare up on the east­ern side of the Pal­isades Fire.

Brid­get Berg, who was at work when she saw on TV her house in Al­tade­na erupt in flames, came back for the first time with her fam­i­ly two days lat­er “just to make it re­al.”

Their feet crunched across the bro­ken bits of what had been their home for 16 years.

Her kids sift­ed through de­bris on the side­walk, find­ing a clay pot and a few keep­sakes as they searched for Japan­ese wood prints they hoped to re­cov­er. Her hus­band pulled his hand out of rub­ble near the still-stand­ing fire­place, hold­ing up a piece of pet­ri­fied wood hand­ed down by his grand­moth­er.

“It’s OK. It’s OK,” Berg said as much to her­self as oth­ers as she took stock of the de­struc­tion, re­mem­ber­ing the deck and pool from which her fam­i­ly watched fire­works. “It’s not like we just lost our house — every­body lost their house.”

Since the fires first be­gan pop­ping up around a dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed, 25-mile (40-kilo­me­ter) ex­panse north of down­town LA, they have burned more than 12,000 struc­tures, a term that in­cludes homes, apart­ment build­ings, busi­ness­es, out­build­ings and ve­hi­cles. No cause has been iden­ti­fied yet for the largest fires.

City lead­er­ship ac­cused of fail­ing to pro­vide enough mon­ey for fire­fight­ing

Al­le­ga­tions of lead­er­ship fail­ures and po­lit­i­cal blame have be­gun and so have in­ves­ti­ga­tions. Gov. Gavin New­som on Fri­day or­dered state of­fi­cials to de­ter­mine why a 117 mil­lion-gal­lon (440 mil­lion-litre) reser­voir was out of ser­vice and some hy­drants ran dry, call­ing it “deeply trou­bling.”

Mean­while, Los An­ge­les Fire Chief Kristin Crow­ley said city lead­er­ship failed her de­part­ment by not pro­vid­ing enough mon­ey for fire­fight­ing. She al­so crit­i­cized the lack of wa­ter.

“When a fire­fight­er comes up to a hy­drant, we ex­pect there’s go­ing to be wa­ter,” she said.

At least 11 peo­ple have been killed, with five from the Pal­isades Fire and six from the Eaton Fire, ac­cord­ing to the LA Coun­ty med­ical ex­am­in­er’s of­fice. Of­fi­cials said they ex­pect­ed that num­ber to rise as ca­dav­er dogs go through lev­elled neigh­bour­hoods to as­sess the dev­as­ta­tion to an area larg­er than San Fran­cis­co.

Of­fi­cials on Fri­day set up a cen­tre where peo­ple could re­port those miss­ing. Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple re­mained un­der evac­u­a­tion or­ders, and the fires have con­sumed about 56 square miles (145 square kilo­me­tres).

The dis­as­ter took homes from every­one — from wait­ers to movie stars. The gov­ern­ment has not yet re­leased fig­ures on the cost of the dam­age, but pri­vate firms have es­ti­mat­ed it will climb in­to the tens of bil­lions. The Walt Dis­ney Co. an­nounced Fri­day it will do­nate $15 mil­lion to re­spond to the fires and help re­build.

The flames hit schools, church­es, a syn­a­gogue, li­braries, bou­tiques, bars, restau­rants, banks and lo­cal land­marks like the Will Rogers’ West­ern Ranch House and a Queen Anne-style man­sion in Al­tade­na that dat­ed back to 1887 and was com­mis­sioned for wealthy map­mak­er An­drew Mc­Nal­ly.

LOS AN­GE­LES (AP) —