Wildfires that have raged through parts of California have reduced homes and businesses to charred remains, leaving lives in ruins.
Cars caught in the flames have been reduced to scorched metal skeletons, while homes were left as smouldering piles of debris, with an occasional brick wall or chimney remaining.
So far, 31 people have died in the blazes, which are centred on an area popular with celebrities in hills to the northwest of Los Angeles and also on a small town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.
The so-called "Camp Fire" north of the state capital Sacramento, which has killed 29, has destroyed 6,400 buildings and effectively wiped the community of Paradise off the map.
A further 200 people remain unaccounted for in the Paradise area.
It is not the first time Paradise, a spread out rural town where virtually all of its homesteads are swathed in pine trees, has been devastated by forest fires.
In 2008, more than 10,000 people had to be evacuated as thousands of hectares of land were ravaged by fire.
But experts say it is unexpected for such dangerous wildfires to have broken out in that part of California so late in the year, as November is normally among the wettest months.
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The fire named the Woolsey Fire in southern California has hit the beachside community of Malibu and the hills to its north where some stars have based themselves because of their views and the proximity to Hollywood.
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Several of the houses destroyed are likely to have been worth millions of dollars.
Wildfires are common in the mountains around Los Angeles, with five of the 20 biggest in the state's history having been in LA, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties in the last 10 years.
And the state's previous most deadly fire, the Griffith Park blaze, occurred in Los Angeles County in 1933.
The south of the state has hot and dry conditions from spring into late autumn and any outbreaks of fire can be fanned or made worse by strong winds that blow from the deserts inland.
Officials say the behaviour of the fires they have to deal with has been changing over the years.
Droughts and record summer temperatures have been leaving vegetation extremely crisp and dry and the changing nature of the resulting blazes has affected fire brigades's ability to redirect firefighting resources around the state.
Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby said: "Typically this time of year when we get fires in Southern California we can rely upon our mutual aid partners in Northern California to come assist us because this time of year they've already had significant rainfall or even snow.
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"It's evident from that situation statewide that we're in climate change and it's going to be here for the foreseeable future," he said.
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Sky News
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