Thousands flee as wildfires burn out of control in and around Los Angeles and homes are destroyed

LOS ANGELES –

California firefighters battled wind-whipped wildfires that tore across the Los Angeles area, destroying homes, clogging roadways as tens of thousands fled and straining resources as the fires burned uncontained early Wednesday.

The flames from a fire that broke out Tuesday evening near a nature preserve in the inland foothills northeast of L.A. spread so rapidly that staff at a senior living centre had to push dozens of residents in wheelchairs and hospital beds down the street to a parking lot. The residents waited there in their bedclothes as embers fell around them until ambulances, buses and even construction vans arrived to take them to safety.

Another blaze that started hours earlier ripped through the city’s Pacific Palisades neighbourhood, a hillside area along the coast dotted with celebrity residences and memorialized by the Beach Boys in their 1960s hit “Surfin’ USA.” In the frantic haste to get to safety, roadways became impassable when scores of people abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot, some toting suitcases.

The traffic jam on Palisades Drive prevented emergency vehicles from getting through and a bulldozer was brought in to push the abandoned cars to the side and create a path. Video along the Pacific Coast Highway showed widespread destruction of homes and businesses along the famed roadway.

Pacific Palisades resident Kelsey Trainor said the only road in and out of her neighbourhood was 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.”

A third wildfire started around 10:30 p.m. and quickly prompted evacuations in Sylmar, a San Fernando Valley community that is the northernmost neighbourhood in Los Angeles. The causes of all three fires were under investigation.

Flames were being pushed by Santa Ana winds topping 97 km/h in some places. The winds were expected to increase overnight, producing isolated gusts that could top 160 km/h in mountains and foothills — including in areas that haven’t seen substantial rain in months.

The situation prompted the Los Angeles Fire Department to take the rare step of putting out a plea for off-duty firefighters to help. It was too windy for firefighting aircraft to fly, further hampering the fight.

Gov. Gavin Newsom posted on X early Wednesday that California had deployed more than 1,400 firefighting personnel to combat the blazes. “Emergency officials, firefighters, and first responders are all hands on deck through the night to do everything possible to protect lives,” Newsom said.

The erratic weather caused President Joe Biden to cancel plans to travel to inland Riverside County, where he was to announce the establishment of two new national monuments in the state. He remained in Los Angeles, where smoke was visible from his hotel, and was briefed on the wildfires. The Federal Emergency Management Agency approved a grant to help reimburse California for the firefighting cost.

Officials didn’t give an estimate of structures damaged or destroyed in the Pacific Palisades wildfire, but they said about 30,000 residents were under evacuation orders and more than 13,000 structures were under threat. Gov. Gavin Newsom visited the scene and said many homes had burned.

By evening the flames had spread into neighboring Malibu and several people there were being treated for burn injuries and a firefighter had a serious head injury and was taken to a hospital, according to Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. Erik Scott.

By early Wednesday, the Eaton fire, which started around 6:30 p.m. the day before, had quickly burned four square kilometres, according to fire officials. The Hurst fire jumped to 500 acres and the Palisades fire, which started around around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday and sent up a dramatic plume of smoke visible across Los Angeles, had destroyed 11.6 square kilometres according to Angeles National Forest. The fires were at zero per cent containment as of early Wednesday.

A firefighter walks toward a burning structure as the Eaton Fire advances, Jan. 7, 2025, in Altadena, Calif. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)

“By no stretch of the imagination are we out of the woods,” Newsom warned residents, saying the worst of the winds were expected between 10 p.m. Tuesday and 5 a.m. Wednesday. He declared a state of emergency.

As of Tuesday evening, nearly 167,000 people were without power in Los Angeles county, according to the tracking website PowerOutage.us, due to the strong winds.

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.

The neighborhood, which 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.

Long-time Palisades resident Will Adams said he immediately went to pick his two kids up from St. Matthews Parish School when he heard the fire was nearby. Meanwhile, he said embers flew into his wife’s car as she tried to evacuate.

“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 witnessed anything like this in the 56 years he’s lived there. 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.

“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.

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.

Some trees and vegetation on the grounds of the Getty Villa were burned by late Tuesday, but staff and the museum collection remain safe, Getty President Katherine Fleming said in a statement. The museum located on the eastern end of the Pacific Palisades is a separate campus of the world-famous Getty Museum that focuses on the art and culture of ancient Greece and Rome. The fire also burned Palisades Charter High School.

Film studios cancelled two movie premieres due to 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.

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Watson reported from San Diego. Associated Press writers Janie Har in San Francisco, Hallie Golden in Seattle and video journalist Eugene Garcia in Los Angeles contributed to this report.