LOS ANGELES (AP) — Wildfires tore across the Los Angeles area with devastating force Wednesday after 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 center 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 neighborhood, a hillside area along the coast dotted with celebrity residences and memorialized 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 neighborhood 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 neighborhood 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 neighborhood in Los Angeles, and a fourth was reported early Wednesday in Coachella, in Riverside County. The causes of the fires were under investigation.
Flames were being pushed by Santa Ana winds topping 60 mph (97 kph) in some places Tuesday, increasing to 80 mph (129 kph) by early Wednesday, according to reports received by the National Weather Service. They could top 100 mph (160 kph) in mountains and foothills — including in areas that haven’t seen substantial rain in months.
California’s wildfire season typically begins in June or July and runs through October, according to the Western Fire Chiefs Association, but January wildfires are not unprecedented — there was one in 2022 and 10 in 2021, according CalFire.
Recent data show the season is beginning earlier and ending later due to rising temperatures and decreased rainfall tied to climate change. That means rains that usually end fire season are often delayed, meaning fires can burn through the winter months, the association says.
Ongoing red flag warnings highlight extremely critical fire weather conditions due to a combination of strong wind gusts in some of the highest terrain Wednesday morning and exceptionally dry relative humidity levels, according to Peter Mullinax, a meteorologist with the weather service’s office in College Park, Maryland.