Around 30,000 Los Angeles residents were issued with evacuation orders after fast-moving wildfires accelerated by fierce winds threatened over 13,000 structures on Tuesday.
Firefighters were battling to contain the blazes in the hills and forests close to up-market neighborhoods such as Santa Monica, Venice Beach and Malibu — home to hundreds of celebrities and prominent people.
'Many structures destroyed' by wildfire in LA suburbs
No injuries have yet been reported but California Governor Gavin Newsom said that there were "many structures already destroyed."
With the worst of the winds expected between 10 p.m. Tuesday and 5 a.m. Wednesday, local time, he warned residents across Southern California not to assume they are out of danger.
"Los Angeles is currently experiencing an extreme fire weather condition with red flag alert," the city's fire chief Kristin Crowley said during a press briefing.
"The fire is being fueled by a combination of strong winds and surrounding topography, which is making it extremely challenging for our personnel that are assigned to this incident."
Roughly half a million people were facing having their power shut off by utility companies to reduce the risk of equipment sparking further blazes.
Forecasters are predicting the windstorm could last for days, with gusts of up to 100 miles-per-hour (160 km/h) in hilly areas that haven't seen substantial rain in months.
In the exclusive Pacific Palisades neighborhood, 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of central LA, fires reportedly consumed nearly two square miles (about five square kilometers) of land, producing plumes of smoke visible in the high-end neighborhood of Venice Beach just six miles away.
With sections of Interstate 10 heading downtown and the scenic Pacific Coast Highway to the north closed to all non-essential traffic, many Palisades residents abandoned their cars on gridlocked roads to flee on foot.
Los Angeles residents report blocked roads
Resident Kelsey Trainor said the only road in and out of her neighborhood was completely blocked.
"We looked across and the fire had jumped from one side of the road to the other side of the road," she told the Associated Press, which also reported roofs, walls and chimneys of houses on fire.
"People were getting out of the cars with their dogs and babies and bags, they were crying and screaming," continued Trainor. "The road was just blocked, full-on blocked for an hour."
Will Adams, another resident, said: "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."
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California, Los Angeles, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, explained on Monday that the high winds act as an "atmospheric blow-dryer" for vegetation.
"We really haven't seen a season as dry as this one follow a season as wet as the previous one," he added.
The extreme weather has caused President Joe Biden to cancel a trip to Riverside County further inland, and will announce the establishment of two new monuments in central Los Angeles instead.
Premieres of Christopher Abbott's "Wolf Man" and Jennifer Lopez's new film "Unstoppable" was also canceled due to the fires and high winds, according to Amazon and MGM Studios.
Source: DW
Bd-pratidin English/ Afia
