Pacific Palisades fire explodes to nearly 3,000 acres as thousands of residents flee, homes are lost
- Fires have ignited in the L.A. area amid dangerous, dry offshore winds.
- The Palisades fire has grown to more than 2,900 acres and forced about 30,000 residents to evacuate.
- Winds are expected to increase overnight, posing a serious challenge to firefighters.
A fire was burning out of control Tuesday in Pacific Palisades, destroying homes and forcing residents to abandon their vehicles and flee amid a potentially “life-threatening and destructive” windstorm.
Wide swaths of Pacific Palisades, Topanga and Malibu were under an evacuation order by the afternoon, as residents fought traffic jams and heavy smoke as they tried to escape the nearby flames. The Palisades fire broke out around 10:30 a.m. near Piedra Morada Drive and was pushed by intense wind gusts that officials had warned could fuel any spark into a fast-moving and erratic wildfire.
The fire had blackened more than 2,900 acres by 6:30 p.m as it continued to charge southwest. The grounds of the Getty Villa caught fire, as did the campus of Palisades Charter High School.
The Palisades fire had grown to more than 2,900 acres as of Tuesday evening, driven by ‘life-threatening and destructive’ winds. The extreme wind event blasting Southern California is forecast to peak between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.
“It’s bad. It’s like an inferno,” said Lori Libonati, who lives in Pacific Palisades. She saw the fire start to burn Tuesday morning before evacuating.
By 3:30 p.m., about 30,000 residents had been evacuated from 10,000 homes, with no injuries reported, said Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell at an afternoon news conference. Firefighters responded to more than half a dozen calls of residents trapped in buildings throughout the day.
Gov. Gavin Newsom met with first responders in Pacific Palisades and called the blaze a “hell of a way to start a new year” as he urged residents to heed evacuation orders. On Tuesday afternoon, he declared a state of emergency and announced that California had secured a Fire Management Assistance Grant to receive federal reimbursement for firefighting costs.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation. Massive smoke plumes filled the sky around the fire as families evacuated not far from hillsides glowing orange. The blaze quickly jumped across Palisades Drive, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection — leaving many trying to evacuate in a precarious and chaotic situation. Some jumped out of their stalled cars to run toward the beach; others who were unable to get out were forced to return home and shelter in place, residents told The Times.
Ellen Delosh-Bacher tried to rush home from downtown Los Angeles when she heard about the fire to get her 95-year-old mother, her mom’s caregiver and their two dogs, but she quickly hit a standstill at Sunset Boulevard and Palisades Drive.
Then, the fire exploded along the road and police officers started yelling for people to abandon their cars: “Run for your lives!” Delosh-Bacher recalled hearing an officer say. She left her keys in the ignition and ran half a mile down to the beach. Firefighters could be heard telling dispatchers over radio traffic that as many as 100 abandoned vehicles were blocking the road.
“This is like an apocalypse,” Delosh-Bacher said. “I live on a ridge. I’m going to be pretty screwed if the fire goes up [there].”
Her mother was stuck at her house, but she said she heard firefighters started telling her neighbors to shelter in place instead of evacuating.
“I don’t know, I’m so scared,” Delosh-Bacher said.
Capt. Erik Scott, a Los Angeles Fire Department spokesperson, said some homes had burned in the fire, but a precise estimate was not immediately available.
The region remains under severe red flag warnings as dry, unpredictable and strong offshore winds pick up across the area. The National Weather Service said strong north winds were expected around the fire through at least Wednesday, with speeds peaking from 35 to 60 mph between 10 p.m. Tuesday and 5 a.m. Wednesday.
“It really does look like the worst of this is going to be in the middle of the night Tuesday night into the early morning on Wednesday,” said UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain. “It will be quite a widespread event, so this will not be like a Santa Ana wind event where it’s windy in the mountains and pretty calm in the urban areas — this one is going to be a doozy.”
In some parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, gusts up to 100 mph are possible as the dangerous windstorm drags on. Wind speeds had already hit 60 to 70 mph Tuesday in some areas of the eastern Santa Monica Mountains not far from the fire, according to the National Weather Service.
“It looks grim,” Magnolia Shin said around noon Tuesday, about an hour after she left her house on Piedra Morada Drive. Shin said she could feel the heat from the flames before she left, which were within 50 yards of her home. She didn’t have time to try to save anything from her home before evacuating.
“I couldn’t even get my rabbit,” she said. “I just left. I just took my purse and drove away.”
The upscale Palisades community is a secluded neighborhood retreat for the rich and powerful, including many celebrities. That seclusion carries risks when emergencies occur.
George Hutchinson stood on his apartment’s rooftop at Sunset Boulevard and Temescal Canyon Road watching the fire after rushing home from his hair salon.
He lives in the evacuation zone and his car was packed and ready, but because the traffic was bumper-to-bumper, he decided to wait it out.
“It looks horrible,” he said. “You can keep seeing houses burn. It jumps and it’s crazy. Traffic is gridlock — there are three ways in and out of this town and it’s all packed. Lots of chaos.”
The honorary mayor of Pacific Palisades, comedian Eugene Levy, evacuated early Tuesday along with other residents of the neighborhood.
“The smoke looked pretty black and intense over Temescal Canyon,” Levy told The Times as he was stuck in traffic. “I couldn’t see any flames, but the smoke was very dark.”
Residents fleeing down Sunset Boulevard gathered along Pacific Coast Highway, many calling family members still trapped in traffic; others cried as they finally reunited.
Calvary Christian School students and teachers posted in the Sunset Beach parking lot, waiting to connect students with their families. But the smoke quickly moved toward the shore. By noon, ash was dropping from the sky along the coastline.
“I figured it was safer at the beach, but now I’m not so sure,” said Daryl Goldsmith. “The wind is virulent and I just hope things don’t burn down. … The poor fire department couldn’t get up there.”
Goldsmith was at her Palisades home with friends when she spotted the fire. It quickly exploded, she said.
As she rushed to evacuate, her husband stayed behind to help a disabled neighbor escape. Firefighters began directing traffic, but Goldsmith decided to ditch her car in the grass and walk down to the shore.
As she waited at Sunset Beach, her husband was still stuck up the hill.
Amid a parched landscape, the major wind event is creating particularly dangerous fire weather — similar to the conditions that were in place when the November Mountain fire in Ventura County and Malibu’s Franklin fire in December erupted.
Officials said this was not a typical Santa Ana wind event, though it is indeed bringing dry, offshore winds to the area. The widespread wind event is expected to cause disruptions from Santa Barbara County south through San Diego County beginning Tuesday and continuing at least to Friday.
Red flag warnings remain in place across the region, citing an “increased risk for large fires with very rapid fire spread, extreme fire behavior and long-range spotting.” Some areas fall under the most elevated warning of a particularly dangerous situation.
Forecasters are also warning the event could bring a wind phenomenon that can cause short-lived but extremely destructive winds, particularly in the San Gabriel foothills and valleys. The “mountain wave wind” activity occurs when gusts rapidly drop down mountain slopes, then gain strength upon hitting the flat landscape, causing “brief bursts of very strong, dangerous winds,” said Rich Thompson, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
He said this could be the strongest such wind event since the 2011 windstorm that caused serious damage in Pasadena, Altadena and other San Gabriel Valley neighborhoods, knocking out power for days for more than 400,000 people.
The mountain wave winds, which could reach 80 to 100 mph, are expected to be the strongest across the 118 and 210 highway corridors, including the San Gabriel and San Fernando foothills, Simi Valley and eastern Ventura County valleys.
Winds are expected to peak late Tuesday and linger through at least Friday.
The Palisades fire had grown to more than 2,900 acres as of Tuesday evening, driven by ‘life-threatening and destructive’ winds. The extreme wind event blasting Southern California is forecast to peak between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.
Electricity providers started initiating power shutoffs Tuesday morning to limit further fire starts. About 5,000 customers in Los Angeles and Ventura counties were without power by early Tuesday afternoon, according to Southern California Edison.
The utility has warned that an additional 400,000 customers across Los Angeles, Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino counties may see shutoffs Tuesday and Wednesday “due to heightened wildfire risk.” San Diego Gas & Electric is considering cutting off power to more than 60,000 customers, but none was initiated as of Tuesday afternoon.
The powerful winds also led President Biden to scrap plans to travel from Los Angeles to the Coachella Valley to sign a proclamation creating the Chuckwalla National Monument, which will span more than 624,000 acres southeast of Joshua Tree National Park.
That proclamation, and one creating another national monument in Northern California, is now expected to be signed at the White House next week.
Times staff writers Summer Lin, Ruben Vives, Terry Castleman and Connor Sheets contributed to this report.
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