Thousands flee as wildfire whips through L.A. hillsides

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 that has forced thousands of residents to flee. 

The fire that swiftly consumed part of the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood in western Los Angeles sent residents fleeing to the clogged Pacific Coast Highway. About 30,000 residents are under evacuation orders and more than 13,000 structures are under threat from the blaze, said Kristin Crowley, fire chief of the L.A. Fire Department. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom says many structures have already been destroyed.

One resident described seeing people crying and screaming as they ran away carrying their children and pets.   

Forecasters warned the worst may be yet to come with the windstorm predicted to last for days, producing isolated gusts that could top 160 km/h 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.

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 neighbourhood 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 neighbourhood that borders Malibu about 32 kilometres west of downtown L.A. 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.   

Residents flee on foot

Longtime 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 neighbourhood 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 neighbourhood in the 56 years he’s lived there.

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 and area 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.

“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 moving cars.”

The erratic weather caused U.S. President Joe Biden to cancel plans to travel to inland California’s Riverside County, where he was to announce the establishment of two new national monuments in the state. Biden will deliver his remarks in L.A. instead.

Winds driving flames higher

The National Weather Service said the wind 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 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 0.25 centimetres 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.