Santa Ana winds, drought and a hotter planet have helped exacerbate the Palisades, Hurst and Eaton fires in California

• California wildfires – live updates

Even in a state that’s become grimly accustomed to severe conflagrations, the rapid surge of wildfire that has torched the Los Angeles area has been shocking, triggering mass evacuations that have left behind charred suburban homes.

Roughly 50,000 people have been ordered to evacuate amid three large, fast-moving fires that have engulfed thousands of acres close to the heart of the US’s second-largest city, with one raging in the western Pacific Palisades and the other in the eastern mountains above Pasadena. A further, smaller fire is burning in the northern Los Angeles suburb of Sylmar.