LOS ANGELES (AP) — Wildfires tore across the Los Angeles area with devastating force Wednesday, setting off a desperate escape from burning homes through flames, ferocious winds and towering clouds of smoke.
The flames from a fire that broke out Tuesday evening near a nature preserve in the inland foothills northeast of LA spread so rapidly that staff at a senior living centre had to push dozens of residents in wheelchairs and hospital beds down the street to a parking lot. The residents — one as old as 102 — waited there in their bedclothes as the night sky glowed red from flames and embers fell around them until ambulances, buses and even construction vans arrived to take them to safety.
Another blaze that started hours earlier ripped through the city's Pacific Palisades neighbourhood, a hillside area along the coast dotted with celebrity residences and memorialised by the Beach Boys in their 1960s hit Surfin' USA. In the frantic haste to get to safety, roadways became impassable when scores of people abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot, some toting suitcases.
Sheriece Wallace was unaware there was a fire burning around her in that area until her sister called at the moment a helicopter made a water drop over her house.
"I was like, 'it's raining,'" Wallace said. "She's like, 'No, it's not raining. Your neighbourhood is on fire. You need to get out.'"
"As soon as I opened my door, it was like right there," she said. "The first thing I did was looked at the trees to see where the wind was blowing. Because it hit me. It blew me back." She was able to leave.
The traffic jam on Palisades Drive prevented emergency vehicles from getting through and a bulldozer was brought in to push the abandoned cars to the side and create a path. Video along the Pacific Coast Highway showed widespread destruction of homes and businesses along the famed roadway.
Pacific Palisades resident Kelsey Trainor said the only road in and out of her neighbourhood was blocked. Ash fell all around them while fires burned on both sides of the road.
"We looked across and the fire had jumped from one side of the road to the other side of the road," Trainor said. "People were getting out of the cars with their dogs and babies and bags, they were crying and screaming."
The fires at higher elevations were preventing utility crews from getting water to refill tanks, the Los Angeles Department of Wind and Power said in a statement Tuesday night.
A third wildfire started around 10:30 p.m. and quickly prompted evacuations in Sylmar, a San Fernando Valley community that is the northernmost neighbourhood in Los Angeles. The causes of all three fires were under investigation.
The situation prompted the Los Angeles Fire Department to take the rare step of putting out a plea for off-duty firefighters to help. It was too windy for firefighting aircraft to fly, further hampering the fight. A high wind warning was in effect for the region through 6 p.m., the weather service said.
"This will likely be the most destructive windstorm seen (since a) 2011 windstorm that did extensive damage to Pasadena and nearby foothills of the San Gabriel Valley," the weather service said in a red flag warning early Wednesday.
Governor Gavin Newsom posted on X early Wednesday that California had deployed more than 1,400 firefighting personnel to combat the blazes. "Emergency officials, firefighters, and first responders are all hands on deck through the night to do everything possible to protect lives," Newsom said.
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