At least one person has died in the blaze, which has torched more than 5,200 acres around the northern Japanese city of Ofunato since Thursday, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency (FDMA).

Although January to March is typically Ofunato’s driest season, the area saw less rainfall last month than any February in more than 20 years – recording just 2.5 millimetres, compared to the usual average of 41.

About 4,600 people remain under government-issued evacuation orders as the fire continues to burn.

Some 2,000 have already left the area to stay with friends or relatives, and more than 1,200 have evacuated to shelters, officials said.

The fires are burning in a forest area of Iwate Prefecture, which is Japan’s second largest prefecture and has the country’s second-lowest population density.

More than 80 buildings are estimated to have been damaged so far, although FDMA noted that details are still being assessed.

“Although it is inevitable that the fire will spread to some extent, we will take all possible measures to ensure there will be no impact on people’s homes,” Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said in parliament.

Thousands of firefighters from 14 prefectures, including Tokyo, have been dispatched to fight the fires. At least 16 helicopters are also being used, with images showing the aircraft dumping water onto the smouldering hills.

Like many other countries, Japan in 2024 recorded its hottest year since records began.

It is difficult to know if climate change has caused or worsened specific fires, because other factors – such as changes to the way land is used – are also relevant.

However, the IPCC says climate change is making the weather conditions needed for wildfires to spread more likely.

Then on Thursday afternoon came another jolt in the form of a text alert.

This one was mistakenly sent to every cell phone in the county – home to about 10 million people – warning them the blaze was close and they should prepare to evacuate.

Rebecca Alvarez-Petit was on a video work call when her phone started blaring.”An EVACUATION WARNING has been issued in your area,” the text message said.

The sound echoed around her as each of her colleagues received the same startling message.

“It was like a massive panic that I was watching in real-time,” she said.

She and colleagues started researching and trying to see whether they were in imminent danger.Instant relief came in the form of a corrected alert telling them to disregard the warning but this soon gave way to newfound anger, she said.

“We’re all on pins and needles and have been anxiously sitting by our phones, staring at the TV, having the radio going – trying to stay as informed as possible because there wasn’t a good system in place,” said Ms Alvarez-Petit, who lives in West Los Angeles.

“And then this. It’s like – you have got to be kidding me.”

The death toll from the wildfires has continued to climb with at least 10 people known to have died and that toll may grow.For many, the anxiety about saving lives and property has turned into a sense of frustration over the handling of the fires.

Officials have acknowledged some of the complaints, from hydrants running dry that hindered firefighting efforts to questions about preparedness and fire mitigation investment.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass returned to the city from a pre-planned trip to Africa to find it on fire. She faced intense questions on Thursday about the region’s preparedness, her leadership in this crisis and the water issues that failed firefighters.

Ĺ”Was I frustrated by this? Of course,” Mayor Bass said, answering a question about water issues and whether the area was prepared enough. She noted that is an “unprecedented event”.

Like other officials, she stressed the fires were able to spread on Tuesday because of strong winds – the same winds that prevented aircraft from dropping water or fire retardant on the blazes. She said urban water systems and neighbourhood fire hydrants are not built to handle dousing thousands of acres of fire.

She noted there will be reviews of how the incident unfolded that will examine how officials and agencies handled it.

“When lives have been saved and homes have been saved, we will absolutely do an evaluation to look at what worked, what didn’t work, and to correct or to hold accountable any body, department, individual,” she said.

“My focus right now is on the lives and on the homes.”

The evolving disaster has turned into a need to understand why this happened and how it escalated into the most destructive fire in the history of Los Angeles.

As one of the now five fires burning in Los Angeles County approached Larry Villescas’ home on Tuesday, he grabbed the only tool he could – a garden hose.He and his neighbour made quick work of the embers falling on their homes from the Eaton Fire and igniting grass.Then the hose ran dry.

He watched his neighbours’ home in Altadena ignite. Then there was a boom – a nearby home was ablaze and sounded as though it exploded. He had to leave.

As he drove away, he watched the fire take hold of his garage.”If we had water pressure, we would have been able to fight it,” Mr Villescas said, standing in front of the charred remains of his home.

He remembered seeing firefighters that night – as the community burned – sitting in their trucks, unable to help.

“I remember my rage. It was like ‘do something,’ but they can’t – there’s no water pressure,” he said. “It’s just infuriating. How could this happen?”

Some experts have said the water shortage is due to unprecedented demand not mismanagement.

“The problem is that the scope of the disaster is so vast that there are thousands of firefighters and hundred of fire engines drawing upon water,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the California Institute for Water Resources, told the BBC.

“Ultimately only so much water can flow through pipes at a time.

“Other neighbours shared their sense the state was not prepared despite routinely seeing destructive fires.

Hipolito Cisneros, who was surveying the remains of his now-destroyed home, said the public utilities in the area have needed upgrades for years.

“We’ve lived here for 26 years and we’ve never seen it tested,” he says about the fire hydrant at the end of his block that failed to draw water when it was needed most.

Down the street, Fernando Gonzalez helped his brother sift through the rubble of his home of 15 years.

He noted that his own home in Santa Clarita – about 45 minutes away in Los Angeles County – was also being threatened by a different set of wildfires.

“We’ve just been on high alert,” he said. “It’s all around us, you know.”

The LA Fire Department (LAFD) urged people in a statement “to be careful while returning to your homes”.

Some 15,000 local residents had been earlier asked to leave because of the Sunset Fire, one of at least five large-scale wildfires which have caused widespread devastation across LA and neighbouring areas.

Five people have been confirmed killed.The LAFD lifted the evacuation order for Hollywood Hills West at 07:30 local time (15:30 GMT) on Thursday.

The first blaze began on Tuesday in the city’s Pacific Palisades neighbourhood, near Malibu, with others subsequently breaking out across the north of the city.The fire in Hollywood Hills, a residential neighbourhood overlooking the historic Hollywood area of the city, began at around 18:00 on Wednesday.

Less than two hours later, much of the heart of Hollywood was blanketed with thick smoke, and the tops of the palm trees that line its streets were barely visible.

People used sweatshirts to cover their faces to help them breathe, while others – clearly surprised by the fire – wore only pyjamas. Many carried bags and suitcases, talking on their phones as they made plans for where to go.

Many of the roads near the fire – including Hollywood Boulevard, home to the Hollywood Walk of Fame – were gridlocked with traffic. Some people even drove on the wrong side of the road as they tried to get out of the area.

Resident Anna Waldman told the BBC she had set out to walk her dog but smelled smoke almost instantly when she went outside.

She went back inside and, looking out her back windows, saw fire, and watched as it moved quickly through the Hollywood Hills, coming to within a block of her home.

She packed what she could: food, clothes, blankets, food for her three small dogs.”I can’t believe this,” she said in exhaustion, pulling down her face mask.

Makayla Jackson, 26, and her two-year-old son, Ramari, had been evacuated from a homeless shelter that was in danger of burning, and now stood on the street waiting for a ride to a high school where help was being offered to people.”They just told us to get out and go,” she said.

By Wednesday night Sunset Boulevard, the famous strip in West Hollywood, lay in ruins, according to reports in the LA Times.

Local residents told the newspaper banks, cafes and supermarkets they had frequented for decades were completely destroyed.

Michael Payton, store director of the Erewhon supermarket chain, said the shop, famous for its patronage by Los Angeles A-listers, had survived but that the area was levelled.

“The whole Palisades is done,” he told the newspaper, “The whole town is done. This is complete devastation.

“Firefighters tackling the blazes have experienced water shortages and have had to resort to taking water from swimming pools and ponds.

Officials said three separate one-million-gallon tanks were full before the fires began, but that the elevation of the fires meant water couldn’t move quickly enough to hydrants in the affected areas.

The city also doesn’t typically see fires of this magnitude – the Palisades blaze is already the most destructive in its history – and its systems are designed for urban use, not fighting wildfires.180,000 people have been ordered to evacuate across LA County.

Homes of celebrities including Paris Hilton and Billy Crystal have been destroyed.

Communities around the Grampians, in Victoria, have been evacuated amid warnings from authorities that conditions there in the days ahead could be the worst since Australia’s most severe fire season on record, the so-called “Black Summer” of 2019-20.

The bushfires have already burnt over 41,000 hectares (101,000 acres) of land in the past week, however there have been no deaths or loss of property.

Intense heat forecast for Boxing Day has also prompted a string of fire warnings across the country.

Throughout Victoria, temperatures are expected to reach 40C (104F) and be accompanied by strong dry winds, while parts of South Australia and New South Wales could also face bushfire conditions on Thursday into Friday.

“We’re expecting to see extreme fire danger across almost the entire state,” Luke Hegarty, a spokesman for Victoria’s State Control Centre, said.

“This is the most significant fire danger that the state has seen – across the whole sections of state that we’re talking about – since Black Summer. It’s important that people understand that Thursday is a day with serious potential,” he added.

Four interstate firefighting forces and two incident management teams – made up of over 100 personnel – will land in Victoria in the coming days to provide reprieve for emergency crews that have been working around the clock to fight the current fires.

The decision to give families around the Grampians temporary access to their homes “to get Christmas items … presents and the like” on Tuesday morning was made by the state’s Country Fire Authority (CFA) chief officer, Jason Heffernan.

“[This is] to ensure if the residents of Halls Gap will be relocated for Christmas, at least they will have what they need,” he told Seven’s Sunrise programme.

Mary Ann Brown, who lives on the southern edge of the Grampians National Park, told the ABC that her community are on edge heading into the holidays.

“We are not out of the woods until we get a really good drop of rain and that may not come until March or April, so it’s going to be a long summer.”

Parts of Australia have been on high alert for bushfire danger this summer, following several quieter seasons compared with the 2019-20 fires which were linked to hundreds of deaths and swept across 24 million hectares of land.

The country has reeled from disaster to disaster in recent years, experiencing both record breaking floods and extreme heat, as it feels the effects of climate change.

The blaze has been dubbed the Franklin Fire by authorities, who say it has burned more than 300 acres in Malibu Canyon after starting at about 22:50 local time on Monday (06:50 GMT).

Firefighters are on the scene and a mandatory evacuation order is in place in the surrounding area.

It is not yet clear what caused the blaze, which has been labelled a brush fire – meaning a type of blaze that affects lower-lying vegetation such as grasses.

Wildfires more generally in California have the capacity to burn through thousands of acres of vegetation, meaning that this blaze is relatively small – although officials have highlighted its speed of spread.

The evacuation order covered a region east of Malibu Canyon Road and South of Piuma Road as well as the Serra Retreat area, the County of Los Angeles Fire Department said.Malibu authorities highlighted that the fire itself was about three miles (4.8km) north of the Pacific Coast Highway.

It is north of Malibu itself – a small, upmarket city west of Los Angeles popular with wealthy celebrities – and near to Pepperdine University.

The university said the incident was not threatening its property, but that the fire had the potential to grow and that the local area might experience power cuts.

Indeed, the Pepperdine Graphic student newspaper has reported one such cut.

The latest incident comes about a month after another fire forced thousands of people to evacuate another nearby city, Moorpark.

California is a state that is prone to wildfires. The amount of burned areas in the summer in northern and central California increased five times from 1996 to 2021 compared with the 24-year period before, which scientists have attributed to human-caused climate change.

Not all wildfires can automatically be linked directly to climate change. The science is complicated and human factors, including how we manage land and forests, also contribute.

However, scientists say that climate change is making weather conditions that lead to wildfires, such as heat and drought, more likely.