This article is more than 11 months old

This article is more than 11 months old

Millions without power. A hundred thousand ordered to evacuate. A major highway through Los Angeles closed for most of the day, as hills above burned.

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Wildfire season in California is disrupting daily life and highlighting the weaknesses of official responses to climate disasters even in a wealthy and technologically advanced state.

At least three people were reported dead at the scenes of wildfires on the outskirts of Los Angeles on Friday.

In the Saddleridge fire, to the north of the city, officials said 13 buildings were destroyed and another 18 were damaged. To the east of the city, a fire that swept through a mobile home park in Calimesa left 74 buildings destroyed and 16 damaged. Two people died there, officials said.

The fires in Los Angeles burned as power was restored to most of the nearly 2 million residents in the northern part of the state disconnected by Pacific Gas & Electric on Wednesday, seeking to prevent a repeat of the past two years, when its equipment sparked deadly, destructive fires during windy weather.

The blackouts, which hit parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, put medically vulnerable people at risk, highlighted the lack of preparation by city governments for helping at-risk residents, and prompted Governor Gavin Newsom to criticize PG&E for “greed” and “mismanagement”.

The region has been on high alert as powerful Santa Ana winds bring dry desert air to a desiccated landscape that only needs a spark to erupt. Fire officials have warned that they expect more intense and devastating wildfires due, in part, to climate change.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hillsides between homes in the Porter Ranch area of Los Angeles are left charred on Friday. Photograph: Sarah Reingewirtz/AP

Edwin Bernard, 73, is no stranger to flames that have menaced his corner of Los Angeles, but they never arrived as quickly or came as close to his home before.

He and his wife were among some 100,000 residents ordered out of their homes because of a wind-driven wildfire that broke out on Thursday evening in the San Fernando Valley. It spread west through tinder-dry brush in hilly subdivisions on the outskirts of Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest city, and was only 13% contained on Friday night.

A middle-aged man who was near the fire went into cardiac arrest and died after apparently trying to fight the fire himself, authorities said.

The Los Angeles fire chief, Ralph M Terrazas, said he flew over the fire and saw “hundreds, if not thousands of homes” with charred backyards where firefighters had just managed to halt the flames.

Fire swept down the hill across the street, Bernard said, and spat embers over his home of 30 years, sizzling dry grass and igniting trees and bushes. He and his wife scrambled to go, leaving behind medication, photo albums and their four cats.

“It was a whole curtain of fire,” Bernard said. “There was fire on all sides. We had to leave.”

Bernard’s home and the cats survived. His backyard was charred.

Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) Driving into Los Angles tonight. pic.twitter.com/IFt4ZGhl9I

By late Friday, the winds had subsided but the National Weather Service still warned of extreme fire danger in some southern areas because of very low humidity. Air quality in the city was poor, officials said, as smoke settled over much of greater Los Angeles.

Interstate 5, the main north-south corridor, was shut down for much of Friday. Even after motorists returned in the evening, patches of the hills remained on fire.

Jonathan Stahl was driving home to Valencia when he saw the smoke. He immediately diverted to a mobile home park in Sylmar, north-west of Los Angeles, where his grandmother and aunt live together. The park was nearly wiped out in 2008 when one of the city’s most destructive fires leveled 500 homes.

Stahl helped his grandmother, Beverly Stahl, 91, and his aunt pack clothing, medication and their two dogs. They saw flames in the distance as they drove away.

“We just packed up what we could as fast as we could,” Stahl said at an evacuation point at the Sylmar Recreation Center, massaging his grandmother’s shoulders as she sat in a wheelchair with a Red Cross blanket on her lap. “If we’d stuck around, we would have been in trouble. Real big trouble.”

Two more people were confirmed dead in the fire at a mobile home park in Calimesa, east of Los Angeles. Officials confirmed that 89-year-old Lois Arvickson died there in the blaze that destroyed her home. She had called her son to say she was evacuating.

“She said she’s getting her purse and she’s getting out, and the line went dead,” Don Turner said.

He said neighbors saw his mother in her garage as flames approached. They later saw the garage on fire. Her car was still parked in the driveway.

A second body was found at a mobile home park but had not yet been identified, officials said.