Raging wildfires fanned by strong winds tore across the wealthy Los Angeles neighbourhood of Pacific Palisades on Tuesday, burning homes and prompting the city to issue evacuation orders to 30,000 people.
Nearly 1,200 acres were burning in the hills around the Palisades, an affluent coastal community with some of the most expensive property in the US, the Los Angeles Fire Department said on Tuesday. There were no reports of how the blaze began.
Smoke blackened the sky over the area as winds reached up to 60 miles an hour. Gusts were expected to accelerate into Wednesday and could reach as high as 100mph, the strongest in a decade for Southern California.
Fire officials said about 13,000 structures are at risk in the Palisades, home to Hollywood stars such as Tom Hanks and James Woods. Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, said “many structures [are] already destroyed”.
After the fires broke out on Tuesday morning, the roads that snake through its canyons quickly piled up with gridlock traffic as residents tried to evacuate. Many cars were abandoned by their drivers, who fled on foot towards the coast, witnesses said. The fire department has sent trucks to tow away the cars to improve their access to the blazes.
“We’ve been evacuated three times [from previous fires] but this is the scariest we’ve seen,” said Susan Vash, who evacuated on Tuesday afternoon and is staying with family in Santa Monica, a coastal city just to the south. She has lived in Mandeville Canyon area of the Palisades since 1998. “Every time this happens we say we have to move, but we never do.”
The fire threatened the Getty Villa, and some trees and plants on the hilltop site were burnt. But the collection remained safe, the museum’s president said.
Helicopters and “super scooper” aeroplanes dumped water on the fires, though the strong winds proved to be a problem for the aircraft. Utility companies shut off power to more than 8,000 homes to prevent live electrical wires from increasing the fire risk.
Evacuees said the fires were spreading quickly by mid-morning, forcing parents to rush to schools and pick up their children. Witnesses said they could not be sure if the houses they had fled were still standing. It could take days before firefighters could get the blaze under control, and even longer before residents would be allowed to return, fire officials said.
The National Weather Service warned of “life threatening windstorms”, which have accelerated the fire’s spread across a parched landscape that has had very little rain in months.
Fire officials warned the winds would only get worse overnight. “Know that we are not out of danger,” said Anthony Marrone, chief of the LA County Fire Department.
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