Firefighters raced to control a fast-moving wildfire in the Los Angeles hills dotted with celebrity homes as a violent windstorm battered Southern California on Tuesday, fanning the blaze seen for miles as many residents abandoned their cars and fled on foot, leaving the roads blocked.
About 30,000 residents are under evacuation orders and more than 13,000 structures are threatened, said Kristin Crowley, fire chief for the Los Angeles Fire Department.
California Governor Gavin Newsom said he saw “many structures already destroyed.” Officials have not given the exact number of structures damaged or destroyed by the fire.
The cause of the fire was not immediately known and no injuries were reported, officials said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.
Newsom warned Southern California residents not to assume they are out of danger, saying the strongest winds are expected between 10 p.m. Tuesday and 5 a.m. Wednesday.
Forecasters predicted the storm would last for several days, producing isolated gusts of up to 100 mph in the mountains and foothills, including areas that haven’t seen significant rain in months. About half a million utility customers were at risk of having their power shut off to reduce the risk of their equipment starting fires.
Firefighters worked to contain a fast-moving wildfire in the Los Angeles hills dotted with celebrity homes as a windstorm battered Southern California on Tuesday, fanning the blaze. Traffic out of the area was blocked as residents tried to flee, and forecasters warned that worse could be to come with the windstorm expected to last for several days.
In the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, west of Los Angeles, a fire quickly consumed just over five square kilometers of land, causing a spectacular plume of smoke visible across the city.
Sections of Interstate 10 and the scenic Pacific Coast Highway were closed to all non-essential traffic to facilitate evacuation efforts. But other roads were blocked. Some residents jumped out of their vehicles to get out of harm’s way 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 the road and the fire spread from one side of the road to the other,” Trainor said. “People were getting out of cars with their dogs and their babies and their bags, they were crying and screaming. The road was blocked, completely blocked, for an hour.”
An Associated Press reporter saw the roof and chimney of a house burning and another residence with walls burning. The neighborhood bordering Malibu, about 20 miles west of downtown Los Angeles, features hillside streets populated with houses packed tightly together along winding roads nestled against the Santa Monica Mountains and stretches up ‘to the beaches along the Pacific Ocean.
Residents flee on foot
Will Adams, a longtime Palisades resident, said he was in town when the fires started and immediately went to pick up his two children from school in St. Matthews Parish, which is now in the line of fire.
His wife, who was at home, was driving on the main evacuation route for residents in the upper part of the neighborhood when embers flew into her car.
“She got out of her car and left it running,” Adams said. She and many other residents walked toward the ocean until they were safe.
Adams said he has never seen a fire this small in the neighborhood in the 56 years he has lived there.
Actor James Woods posted images of flames burning through bushes and palm trees on a hillside near his home. The towering orange flames floated in the landscaped gardens between the houses.
“Standing in my driveway, getting ready to evacuate,” Woods said in the short video on X.
Actor and neighborhood resident Steve Guttenberg urged people who abandoned their cars to leave their keys behind so they could be moved to make way for fire trucks.
“It’s not a parking lot,” Guttenberg told television station KTLA. “I have friends there and they can’t evacuate. I walk up there as far as I can moving cars.”
Spotty weather conditions prompted U.S. President Joe Biden to cancel plans to visit California’s interior Riverside County, where he was expected to announce the creation of two new national monuments in the state. Biden will instead deliver his speech in Los Angeles.
The winds push the flames higher
The National Weather Service said the wind expected to peak early Wednesday could be the strongest Santa Ana wind storm in more than a decade in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
The winds will act as an “atmospheric dryer” for vegetation, leading to a long period of fire risk, said Daniel Swain, a climatologist at 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 last one,” Swain said Monday.
Recent dry winds, including the notorious Santa Anas, have contributed to warmer than average temperatures in Southern California, where there has been very little rain so far this season.
Southern California hasn’t received more than 0.25 centimeters of rain since early May. Much of the region has fallen into moderate drought conditions, according to the US Drought Monitor. Meanwhile, in the north, many severe storms occurred.
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.
