A wildfire fanned by extreme winds swept through a Los Angeles hillside lined with celebrity mansions on Tuesday, burning homes and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people, some of whom abandoned their cars and fled to safety on foot. blocked roads.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, who was in Southern California to attend the naming of a national monument by US President Joe Biden, made a detour to the canyon to see “firsthand the impact of these swirling winds and embers.” and said he found “quite a few – many structures already destroyed”.
Officials did not give an exact number of structures damaged or destroyed in the Pacific Palisades fire, but they said about 30,000 residents are under evacuation orders and more than 13,000 structures are under threat.
And the worst may be yet to come. The fire started around 10:30 a.m. local time, shortly after the start of a storm in Santa Ana that the US National Weather Service warned could be “life-threatening” and the strongest to hit Southern California in more than a decade. The exact cause of the fire is unknown and no injuries have been reported, officials said.
Winds were expected to pick up overnight and continue for days, producing isolated gusts that could reach 100 mph (160 km/h) in the mountains and lowlands – including in areas that haven’t seen significant rain in months.
“We’re not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination,” Newsom warned residents, saying the worst winds were expected between 10 p.m. Tuesday and 5 a.m. Wednesday. He declared a state of emergency on Tuesday.
Firefighters worked to contain a fast-moving fire in the Los Angeles hills, dotted with celebrity homes, as a windstorm swept through Southern California on Tuesday, fanning the blaze. Traffic out of the area was blocked as residents tried to flee and forecasters warned that the worst could be yet to come with the windstorm expected to last for days.
About 15,000 utility customers in Southern California have had their power shut off to reduce the risk of equipment fires. A total of half a million customers were at risk of losing preliminary power.
The fire quickly consumed just over five square kilometers of land in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood west of Los Angeles, sending a dramatic plume of smoke visible across the city. Residents in Venice Beach, about 10 kilometers away, reported seeing flames. It was one of several blazes throughout the area.
Sections of Interstate 10 and the Pacific Coast Scenic Highway were closed to all non-essential traffic to assist in evacuation efforts. But other roads were blocked. Some residents got 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 around them as 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 their cars with their dogs and babies and their bags, they were crying and screaming. The road was just blocked, like completely blocked, for an hour.”
An Associated Press reporter saw a house’s roof and chimney on fire and another residence with walls burning. The Pacific Palisades neighborhood, which borders Malibu about 20 miles west of downtown LA, includes hilly streets with homes packed tightly along winding roads set against the Santa Monica Mountains and stretching to beaches along the Pacific Ocean.
An AP photographer saw multimillion-dollar buildings in flames as helicopters overhead dropped loads of water. Roads were blocked in both directions as evacuees fled to the Pacific Coast Highway, while others sought rides home to rescue pets. Two of the homes burned were within exclusive gated communities.
Residents flee on foot
Longtime Palisades resident Will Adams said he was in town when the fires started and immediately went to pick up his two children from St. John’s Parish School. Matthews when he heard the fire was near. Meanwhile, he said embers flew into his wife’s car as she tried to evacuate.
“She turned her car loose and let it run,” Adams said. She and many other residents walked to the ocean until it was safe.
Adams said he’s never seen anything like it in the 56 years he’s lived there. He watched as the sky turned brown and then black as the houses began to burn. He could hear loud noises and noises “like little explosions,” which he said he believes were transformers exploding.
“It’s crazy, it’s everywhere, in all the nooks and crannies of Palisades. One house is safe, the other is on fire,” Adams said.
Actor James Woods posted footage of flames burning through bushes and palm trees on a hillside near his home. Tall orange flames shot through the courtyards arranged between the houses.
“Standing in my lane, getting ready to evacuate,” Woods said in the short video on X.
Actor Steve Guttenberg, who lives in Pacific Palisades, urged people who abandoned their cars to leave their keys behind so they could move to make way for fire trucks.
“This is not a parking lot,” Guttenberg told TV station KTLA. “I have friends up there and they can’t evacuate. I’m walking up there as far as I can by moving cars.”
The unsettled weather prompted Biden to cancel plans to travel to Riverside County, where he was to announce two new national monuments in the state. He stayed in Los Angeles, where smoke was visible from his hotel, and was informed of the fires.
The US Federal Emergency Management Agency approved a grant to help reimburse California for the cost of fighting the fire.
Several trees and vegetation on the grounds of the Getty Villa burned late Tuesday, but staff and the museum’s collection remain safe, Getty President Katherine Fleming said in a statement. Located on the eastern edge of the Pacific Palisades, the museum is a separate campus of the world-renowned Getty Museum that focuses on the art and culture of ancient Greece and Rome.
Movie studios canceled two movie premieres because of the fire and windy weather, and the Los Angeles Unified School District said it temporarily relocated students from three campuses in the Pacific Palisades area.
Recent dry winds, including the infamous Santa Anas, have contributed to warmer-than-average temperatures in Southern California, where there has been very little rain so far this season.
