California wildfires rip through LA forcing 30,000 people to evacuate

An enormous wildfire which has ripped through California has almost doubled in size overnight, forcing nearly 30,000 people to flee their homes.

Traffic was backed up for miles along Sunset Boulevard as residents fled their homes in Pacific Palisades, an upscale neighbourhood home to numerous celebrities.

The Pacific Palisades fire grew from 300 acres to more than 1,200 acres within just an hour and a half, fanned by gusts of wind of up to 100mph – the strongest seen in Southern California in over a decade.

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Within hours, the fire had once again doubled in size to over 3,000 acres, prompting mass evacutation orders and sending billowing clouds of thick black smoke pouring into the air.

So dense was the traffic jam on Palisades Drive that many evacuees abandoned their cars in the middle of the road, preventing emergency vehicles from reaching their destination.

A bulldozer was later deployed to push the abandoned cars out of the way and create a path, according to the LA Fire Department.

About 24,000 residents live in the neighborhood west of downtown Los Angeles, and it includes celebrity mansions.

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, 77, shared a video of the fire close to his home.

‘Standing in my driveway ready to evacuate. We’ve got a lot of planes going over dropping water,’ he said. ‘S***’.

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

‘This is not a parking lot,’ Guttenberg told KTLA. ‘I have friends up there and they can’t evacuate. — I’m walking up there as far as I can moving cars.’

Officials did not give an exact number 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.

And the worst could be yet to come. The blaze began around 10:30 a.m., shortly after the start of a Santa Ana windstorm that the National Weather service warned could be ‘life threatening’ and the strongest to hit Southern California in more than a decade. The exact cause of the fire was unknown and no injuries had been reported, officials said.

The winds were expected to increase overnight and continue for days, producing isolated gusts that could top 100 mph (160 kph) in mountains and foothills — including in areas that haven’t seen substantial rain in months.

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

Do not stand in the way of this fire,’ said firefighter David Ortiz. ‘This is pretty much the worst possible scenario for a firefight.’

The blaze began on Tuesday morning and has been scorching at a rate of three football fields per minute.

Its cause remains under investigation.

Hollywood Burbank Airport was placed on ground stop by the Federal Aviation Administration after powerful winds forced planes to abort landings.

The brush fire caused Southern California Edison to cut power to over 8,000 customers in Los Angeles, Riverside and Ventura counties.

CBS News national correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti shared a video on X (formerly Twitter) showing flames on a front yard and embers flying.

‘Mass panic in the streets, and the worst of the wind will hit the Palisades Fire tonight,’ he wrote.

The Pacific Palisades fire comes after the Franklin Fire charred parts of Malibu including palm trees at Pepperdine University beginning on December 9.

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