'LA wildfires are apocalyptic' says expat

A British expat living in the United States has described the "apocalyptic" scenes as Los Angeles continues to be ravaged by wildfires.

The Californian city has seen several neighbourhoods destroyed by fires that started last week.

Officials so far believe at least 24 people have died as two major blazes continue to burn.

Charlotte Hawthorne, 26, a dancer originally from Lowestoft in Suffolk, as well as Catriona Waters who is originally from Braintree in Essex, both described the terrifying scenes they have seen firsthand.

Mrs Waters has lived in Altadena in LA with her husband Simon, who is from Colchester, for the past 20 years with their three children.

They were forced to evacuate their home after the neighbourhood was hit by the fires.

"It's all really surreal, we can't quite believe what has happened, that most of our town has completely disappeared," Mrs Waters told BBC Essex.

"It's not a big town, there's only about 42,000 people so it's close knit and everything is gone, it's completely devastating.

"We evacuated on Tuesday the moment we saw the fire because it broke out about a quarter of a mile from our house and we could see it on the mountain.

"We had winds of about 70mph (113km/h) and we realised it was going to be bad so we left right away and brought a few essentials."

The couple were able to take shelter with one of their children at a friend's home.

They did travel back to their neighbourhood and were able to see that their home had not been destroyed, but officials have warned everyone in the neighbourhood to stay away due to safety concerns.

"It's like someone dropped a bomb in the middle of the city," Mrs Waters added.

"To see it in real life with flames coming out of the ground it's beggars belief, it's apocalyptic it really is, it's the only way to describe it."

Mrs Waters said she did not know when she would be able to return home.

Ms Hawthorne had been back in Suffolk visiting her family for the festive period when the fires started.

She said she had an extremely "tricky" decision when considering if she should fly back to LA or not the next day.

"I was super nervous, but I consider this my home now having been here for two years," she told BBC Radio Suffolk.

"I wanted to get back to see what was going on and check on my friends.

"It was a very hard goodbye, we always have hard goodbyes but this one there was a little bit of extra worry and squeeze in there. The tension was very high."

Her home, which she shares with friends in the Valley part of LA, was at one point surrounded by multiple fires which Ms Hawthorne said was "terrifying".

They had not had to evacuate, but Ms Hawthorne said her bags were packed ready to go.

To help those who had lost homes, she offered her room and had also been volunteering at an evacuation centre.

She said the air quality had also been poor leading to her developing a cough and bloodshot eyes, while her home and wider neighbourhood had suffered power cuts.

"Going to sleep always feels super eerie - you can hear the helicopters and the alerts on our phones are pinging at all sorts of hours," Ms Hawthorne continued.

"It's overwhelming especially at night because you can see the flames and there's just something different [about it]."

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