Los Angeles wildfire burns down homes as 30,000 ordered to evacuate

A huge fire has destroyed homes, burnt cars and let to the evacuation of 30,000 people in southern California.

A fast-moving wildfire broke out on Tuesday (January 7) in foothills northeast of Los Angeles hours after another blaze tore through the city’s Pacific Palisades neighbourhood on the coast.

The fire in Eaton, Altadena, started near a nature reserve just before 6.30pm local time with flames spreading so rapidly that staff at a care home had to push dozens of residents in wheelchairs and hospital beds down the street to a parking lot where they waited in their bedclothes to be taken to safety.

Another blaze to the west in Pacific Palisades started on Tuesday morning and raged out of control into the night. High winds helped fuel that fire, with the blaze in Pacific Palisades exploding from 10 acres to over 2,900 acres within hours.

A third fire reported at 10.10pm local time on Tuesday has burned at least 100 acres of brush in Sylmar in the San Fernando Valley.

A state of emergency has been declared with US president Joe Biden releasing federal funds to support the areas affected.

The Pacific Palisades fire swept through a Los Angeles hillside dotted with celebrity homes. In the dash for safety, roads were clogged and scores of people abandoned their vehicles, fleeing on foot.

A traffic jam in Palisades Drive stopped emergency vehicles getting through so a bulldozer was brought in to push the abandoned cars to the side and create a path, according to the LA Fire Department.

California Governor, Gavin Newsom, who was in southern California to attend the naming of a national monument by Mr Biden made a detour to the canyon to see the impact of the “swirling winds and the embers”. He said he found “not a few — many structures already destroyed”.

Officials did not give an exact number of structures damaged or destroyed in the Pacific Palisades wildfire, but they said over 13,000 were at risk and about 30,000 residents were under evacuation orders.

The blaze began around 10.30am local time, just after the start of a windstorm which the US National Weather service warned could be “life threatening” and the strongest to hit southern California in more than a decade.

Officials said the exact cause of the fire was unknown and no injuries had been reported.

About 25 miles northeast in Altadena, the Eaton fire was burning. The winds were expected to increase overnight and continue for days, producing isolated gusts which could top 100mph in the mountains and foothills. Some of these areas haven’t seen substantial rain in months.

Mr Newsom said: “By no stretch of the imagination are we out of the woods.” He added the worst of the winds were expected between Tuesday night and the early hours of Wednesday local time. The Governor declared a state of emergency on Tuesday.

As of Tuesday night, 28,300 households were without power due to the strong winds, according to the mayor’s office. About 15,000 utility customers in southern California had their power shut off to reduce the risk of equipment sparking a blaze. Half a million customers were at risk of losing power preemptively.

The Pacific Palisades fire burned through about 4.6 square miles of land in the neighbourhood of western Los Angeles, sending up a huge plume of smoke visible across the city.

Locals in Venice Beach, some six miles away reported seeing the fire, which was one of several blazes across the area.

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.

Trainor said: “We looked across and the fire had jumped from one side of the road to the other side of the road. 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.”

The Pacific Palisades neighbourhood, which borders Malibu, is partly made up of tightly packed homes along winding roads nestled against the Santa Monica Mountains, stretching down to beaches on the Pacific Ocean.

Multi-million pound mansions were among the properties on fire as helicopters dropped water from overhead. Roads were clogged in both directions as evacuees fled towards the Pacific Coast Highway while others begged for rides back to their homes to rescue pets. Two of the homes on fire were inside exclusive gated communities.

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.

Adams said: “She vacated her car and left it running.” He added that his wife and many other residents walked down toward the ocean until it was safe.

Adams said he had never seen anything like it in the 56 years he has lived in the area. 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 were transformers exploding.

He added: “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.”

Star Wars actor Mark Hamill said he was evacuated from Malibu. He said in an Instagram post: “Personal Fire Update: 7pm – Evacuated Malibu so last-minute there small fires on both sides of the road as we approached PCH (Pacific Coast Highway).”

From there he went to his daughter Chelsea’s house in Hollywood with his wife Marilou and their dog Trixie. He said: “8:15pm – Marilou, Trixie & I arrive at Chelsea’s house in Hollywood. Most horrific fire since ’93. Stay safe.”

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 landscaped gardens between the homes. Woods said in the video posted on X: “Standing in my driveway, getting ready to evacuate.”

Fellow actor, Steve Guttenberg, who lives in Pacific Palisades, urged people who abandoned their cars to leave their keys behind so they could be moved to make way for fire engines.

Guttenberg told KTLA: “This is not a parking lot. 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 Mr Biden to cancel plans to travel to 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.

Mr Biden said in a statement he and his team were in touch with state and local officials, offering “any federal assistance that is needed to help suppress the terrible Pacific Palisades fire”.

Trees and vegetation on the grounds of the Getty Villa had been burned by the flames, but staff and the museum collection remain safe, according to Getty President Katherine Fleming.

The museum is on the eastern end of the Pacific Palisades and is a separate campus of the world-famous Getty Museum which focuses on the art and culture of ancient Greece and Rome. The fire also burned Palisades Charter High School classrooms.

Film studios cancelled two film premieres due to the fire and windy weather, and the Los Angeles Unified School District said it had temporarily relocated students from three campuses in the Pacific Palisades area.