Firefighters scrambled to corral a fast-moving wildfire in the Los Angeles hillsides dotted with celebrity homes as a fierce windstorm hit Southern California on Tuesday, fanning the blaze seen for miles. Scores of residents abandoned their cars and fled on foot to safety with roads blocked.
Nearly 26,000 people in more than 10,000 households and more than 13,000 structures are under threat from the blaze, said Kristin Crowley, fire chief of the LA Fire Department. One resident described seeing people crying and screaming as they ran away carrying their children and pets. Officials said the worst of the winds are expected overnight Tuesday into Wednesday. Forecasters predicted the windstorm would last for days, producing isolated gusts that could top 100 mph (160 kph) in mountains and foothills — including in areas that haven’t seen substantial rain in months. Roughly half a million utility customers were at risk of having their power shut off to reduce the risk of equipment sparking blazes.
In the Pacific Palisades neighborhood in western Los Angeles, a fire swiftly consumed nearly 2 square miles (just over 5 square kilometers) of land, sending up a dramatic plume of smoke visible across the city. Residents in Venice Beach, some 6 miles (10 kilometers) away, reported seeing the flames. It was one of several blazes across the area.
Sections of Interstate 10 and the scenic Pacific Coast Highway were closed to all non-essential traffic to aid in evacuation efforts. But other roads were blocked. Some residents jumped out of their vehicles to get out of danger and waited to be picked up. Resident Kelsey Trainor said the only road in and out of her neighborhood was completely blocked. Ash fell all around them while fires burned on both sides of the road.
“We looked across and the fire had jumped from one side of the road to the other side of the road,” Trainor said. “People were getting out of the cars with their dogs and babies and bags, they were crying and screaming. The road was just blocked, like full-on blocked for an hour.” An Associated Press journalist saw a roof and chimney of one home in flames and another residence where the walls were burning. The neighborhood that borders Malibu about 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of downtown LA includes hillside streets of tightly packed homes along winding roads nestled against the Santa Monica Mountains and stretches down to beaches along the Pacific Ocean.
Long-time Palisades resident Will Adams said he was down in town when the fires started and immediately went to pick his two kids up from St. Matthews Parish’s school, which is now in the line of the fire. His wife, who was at home, was driving down the main evacuation road for residents in the upper part of the neighborhood when embers flew into her car.
“She vacated her car and left it running,” Adams said. She and many other residents walked down toward the ocean until it was safe. Adams said he had never seen a fire this low into the neighborhood in the 56 years he’s lived there.
“It is crazy, it’s everywhere, in all the nooks and crannies of the Palisades. One home’s safe, the other one’s up in flames,” Adams said. He watched as the sky turned brown and then black as homes started burning. He could hear loud popping and bangs “like small explosions,” which he said he believes were the transformers exploding on the electric poles.
Actor James Woods posted footage of flames burning through bushes and past palm trees on a hill near his home. The towering orange flames billowed among the landscaped yards between the homes. “Standing in my driveway, getting ready to evacuate,” Woods said in the short video on X.
Actor Steve Guttenberg, who lives in the Pacific Palisades, urged people who abandoned their cars to leave their keys behind so they could be moved to make way for fire trucks. “This is not a parking lot,” Guttenberg told KTLA. “I have friends up there and they can’t evacuate … I’m walking up there as far as I can moving cars.”
The erratic weather caused President Joe Biden to cancel plans to travel to inland Riverside County, California, where he was to announce the establishment of two new national monuments in the state. Biden will deliver his remarks in Los Angeles instead.
The National Weather Service said the wind event that was expected to peak early Wednesday could be the strongest Santa Ana windstorm in more than a decade across Los Angeles and Ventura counties. The Los Angeles Unified School District said it was temporarily relocating students from three campuses in the Pacific Palisades area due to the fire.
Amazon and MGM Studios canceled a premiere of Jennifer Lopez’s new film “Unstoppable” due to the fires and high winds.
The winds will act as an “atmospheric blow-dryer” for vegetation, bringing a long period of fire risk, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California, Los Angeles and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “We really haven’t seen a season as dry as this one follow a season as wet as the previous one,” Swain said Monday. Recent dry winds, including the notorious Santa Anas, have contributed to warmer-than-average temperatures in Southern California, where there’s been very little rain so far this season.
Southern California hasn’t seen more than 0.1 inches (0.25 centimeters) of rain since early May. Much of the region has fallen into moderate drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Meanwhile, up north, there have been multiple drenching storms. Areas where gusts could create extreme fire conditions include the charred footprint of last month’s wind-driven Franklin Fire, which damaged or destroyed 48 structures, mostly homes, in and around Malibu.
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