LOS ANGELES (AP) 鈥 Firefighters scrambled to corral a fast-moving wildfire in the Los Angeles hillsides dotted with celebrity homes as a fierce windstorm hit Southern California on Tuesday, fanning the blaze seen for miles as scores of residents abandoned their cars and fled on foot to safety with roads blocked.
About 30,000 residents are under evacuation orders and more than 13,000 structures are under threat, said Kristin Crowley, fire chief of the LA Fire Department.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he saw 鈥渕any structures already destroyed." Officials did not give an exact number of structures damaged or destroyed in the blaze.
The cause of the fire was not immediately known, and no injuries had been reported, officials said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.
Newsom warned residents across Southern California not to assume they are out of danger, saying the worst of the winds are expected between 10 p.m. Tuesday and 5 a.m. Wednesday.
Forecasters predicted the windstorm would last for days, producing isolated gusts that could top 100 mph (160 kph) in mountains and foothills 鈥 including in areas that haven't seen substantial rain in months. The 香港六合彩挂牌资料 Weather service said it could be the strongest in more than a decade across Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
Roughly half a million utility customers were at risk of having their to reduce the risk of equipment sparking blazes.
In the Pacific Palisades neighborhood in western Los Angeles, a fire swiftly consumed nearly 2 square miles (just over 5 square kilometers) of land, sending up a dramatic plume of smoke visible across the city. Residents in Venice Beach, some 6 miles (10 kilometers) away, reported seeing the flames. It 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 neighborhood was completely blocked. Ash fell all around them while fires burned on both sides of the road.
鈥淲e looked across and the fire had jumped from one side of the road to the other side of the road,鈥 Trainor said. 鈥淧eople 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.鈥
An Associated Press journalist saw a roof and chimney of one home in flames and another residence where the walls were burning. The neighborhood that borders Malibu about 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of downtown LA includes hillside streets of tightly packed homes along winding roads nestled against the Santa Monica Mountains and stretches down to beaches along the Pacific Ocean.
Long-time Palisades resident Will Adams said he was down in town when the fires started and immediately went to pick his two kids up from St. Matthews Parish鈥檚 school, which is now in the line of the fire.
His wife, who was at home, was driving down the main evacuation road for residents in the upper part of the neighborhood when embers flew into her car.
鈥淪he vacated her car and left it running,鈥 Adams said. She and many other residents walked down toward the ocean until it was safe.
Adams said he had never seen a fire this low into the neighborhood in the 56 years he鈥檚 lived there.
鈥淚t is crazy, it鈥檚 everywhere, in all the nooks and crannies of the Palisades. One home鈥檚 safe, the other one鈥檚 up in flames,鈥 Adams said.
He watched as the sky turned brown and then black as homes started burning. He could hear loud popping and bangs 鈥渓ike small explosions,鈥 which he said he believes were the transformers exploding on the electric poles.
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 the landscaped yards between the homes.
鈥淪tanding in my driveway, getting ready to evacuate,鈥 Woods said in the short video on X.
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.
鈥淭his is not a parking lot,鈥 Guttenberg told KTLA. 鈥淚 have friends up there and they can鈥檛 evacuate 鈥 I鈥檓 walking up there as far as I can moving cars.鈥
The erratic weather caused President Joe Biden to cancel plans to travel to inland Riverside County, California, where he was to announce the establishment of in the state. Biden will deliver his remarks in Los Angeles instead.
The Los Angeles Unified School District said it was temporarily relocating students from three campuses in the Pacific Palisades area due to the fire.
Amazon and MGM Studios canceled a premiere of Jennifer Lopez鈥檚 new film 鈥淯nstoppable鈥 due to the fires and high winds.
The winds will act as an 鈥渁tmospheric blow-dryer鈥 for vegetation, bringing a long period of fire risk, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist with the University of California, Los Angeles and the 香港六合彩挂牌资料 Center for Atmospheric Research.
鈥淲e really haven't seen a season as dry as this one follow a season as wet as the previous one,鈥 Swain said Monday.
Recent dry winds, including the , have contributed to warmer-than-average temperatures in Southern California, where there鈥檚 been very little rain so far this season.
Southern California hasn鈥檛 seen more than 0.1 inches (0.25 centimeters) of rain since early May. Much of the region has fallen into moderate drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Meanwhile, up north, there have been .
Areas where gusts could create extreme fire conditions include the charred footprint of last month鈥檚 wind-driven , which damaged or destroyed 48 structures, mostly homes, in and around Malibu.
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Associated Press writers Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles contributed to this report, Julie Watson in San Diego, and videojournalist Eugene Garcia in Los Angeles contributed.
