LOS ANGELES – A furious, wind-whipped wildfire tore through hills on the west side of the city on Tuesday, torching homes and vehicles and forcing thousands to evacuate the coastal Pacific Palisades neighborhood. The region, which has not seen significant rain since spring, had been bracing for flames in conditions ripe for fire.
By the afternoon, the fire had raced across more than 1,200 acres as smoke billowed off the foothills and blackened the skies over Los Angeles, fanned by blasting Santa Ana winds that were expected to continue into the rest of the week. The evacuation forced a panicked scramble and massive gridlock as dozens of vehicles were abandoned on Sunset Boulevard and other thoroughfares, forcing authorities to bulldoze them off the roads to free up traffic.
Los Angeles Fire Department officials said 25,700 households and 10,300 structures were threatened by the blaze, known as the Palisades Fire, north of Santa Monica. Southern California Edison, which provides electricity to some 5 million customers in the region, cut off power as an emergency safety measure to more than 7,600 customers in Los Angeles and Ventura counties as the winds tore through the area. The utility has warned more than 412,000 customers across seven counties that they could be subject to such cutoffs.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass implored residents to heed evacuation warnings as the wildfire spread Tuesday.
“Due to increasing winds, this is a very dangerous situation,” she wrote in a post on X.
In the chaos and gridlock of the evacuation, many people abandoned their car and fled on foot. Los Angeles Fire Department officials used a bulldozer Tuesday afternoon to clear some 30 empty vehicles that were snarling traffic, said Margaret Stewart, a spokesperson for the department.
“The primary focus is on continued evacuation,” she said. “The zone has not changed. It’s effectively all of Pacific Palisades.”
Video from the TV station KTLA on Tuesday afternoon showed officials bulldozing abandoned cars out of the way along Palisades Drive to make room for emergency vehicles.
“If this is your car, unfortunately, it’s an emergency situation, and this is what they have to do,” KTLA’s Gene Kang explained from the scene.
Earlier, actor Steve Guttenberg told the station that he had been helping move vehicles so firefighters could reach areas threatened by the blaze.
Guttenberg, known for his roles in “Police Academy” and other films, implored residents not to abandon their cars and block the road.
“Leave the keys in the car so that we can move your car, so that these fire trucks can get up Palisades Drive,” said Guttenberg, who told the station that he lives nearby. “It’s really, really important.”
The fire broke out on the coast, near Topanga Canyon and Pacific Palisades, quickly exploding in less than an hour from 10 to at least 200 acres. Evacuation orders were issued down to the Pacific Coast Highway, as officials ordered residents in the hillside neighborhoods near the Getty Villa Museum to leave immediately. Ominous smoke plumes spread quickly, seeming to move toward structures and homes.
A large swath of people in Topanga Canyon, a woodsy, tucked-away community with one winding road in and out, were under evacuation warnings.
Firefighters quickly stopped a separate vegetation fire that took off in the brushy hills of West Hollywood earlier Tuesday. The fire was reported around 10 a.m. local time near Sunset and La Cienega boulevards.
Winds arrived early Tuesday, but the worst of the windstorm was expected later in the day, peaking Tuesday night and through Wednesday as humidity plummets – a troubling forecast for a region bracing for the possibility of additional and widespread fires.
Gusts of 50 to 80 mph were expected from Ventura County south to San Diego County, with some areas getting destructive gusts between 80 and 100 mph, combined with bone-dry air.
This region is prone to massive, fast-moving fires that erupt during the dry, powerful Santa Ana winds that sweep through in the fall and often strengthen in winter, and the geography and limited evacuation infrastructure can make evacuations a challenge.
“The wind event was forecast last week, as were the red-flag conditions,” said Tim Casperson, a former wildfire firefighter and the writer behind the Hotshot Wake Up, a site that closely tracks wildfire news and information. “You never want to see this kind of destruction, it’s horrific, but community evacuation planning needs to be a priority to better manage the resulting gridlock.”
Topanga butts up against Malibu, which is recovering from last month’s blaze that scorched 4,000 acres and burned and damaged 48 homes.
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Conditions that fueled the fires
Meteorologists have not been mincing words when it comes to the risk posed by this week’s conditions.
“The winds alone would be a big deal, but combined with dry conditions, this is a rare, extremely high end fire weather environment,” Jonathan O’Brien, a meteorologist with the Southern California Geographic Area Coordination Center, wrote on X. “Potentially a worst case scenario event.”
For the third time since early November, parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties are in a “particularly dangerous situation” for extreme fire danger, according to the Storm Prediction Center, which forecast “extremely critical” fire weather overnight Tuesday into Wednesday.
The National Weather Service is also highlighting parts of Orange County and the Inland Empire for especially dangerous conditions.
“Any new fire ignition in these areas will likely have very dangerous wildfire spread and behavior with great difficulty in containment,” the Weather Service in San Diego said.
Red-flag warnings and high-wind warnings blanket most of coastal Southern California.
While the winds are expected to weaken some Wednesday evening, high fire danger will remain through at least Thursday.
It’s not normal for Southern California to be so vulnerable to wildfire in winter, but the region has not seen a soaking storm in nearly nine months, as fire seasons become longer and more intense with climate change.
Downtown Los Angeles has recorded only 0.16 inches of rain since the start of the water year on Oct. 1, while San Diego has received only 0.14 inches.
“The native vegetation is already dry and will continue to be drier as … this dry air blows across the terrain,” Alex Tardy, a meteorologist with the Weather Service in San Diego, said in an update. “So, the fuel is ripe for any wildfires.”
This year’s parched fall and winter follow two consecutive wet winters that allowed vegetation to grow thick. That has provided extra fuel for flames, with destructive wildfires striking in September, November and December.
The Washington Post · Brianna Sacks, Diana Leonard, Joshua Partlow, Brady Dennis
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