Earlier this week, forecasters warned of a “life-threatening, destructive” windstorm that could hit Southern California, with drier areas still recovering from recent disasters at a high risk for wildfires. By Tuesday, those winds had already fanned several blazes across the Los Angeles area, and by 3:30 p.m. local time, Pacific Palisades, a coastal neighborhood west of downtown Los Angeles, saw a 300 acre fire spread to more than 1,200 acres in a span of 90 minutes, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department. The blaze has burned land at a rate of three football fields every minute, said the New York Times.
About 30,000 residents have been ordered to evacuate, and more than 10,000 homes are threatened by the Palisades fire, said the Los Angeles fire chief. Evacuation updates can be found here.
On Tuesday afternoon, the grounds of the Getty Villa had caught fire, according to reports from the Los Angeles Fire Department, per the Los Angeles Times. It’s unclear if any of the structures have caught fire at this time.
The windstorm could last for days and gusts of up to 100 mph are expected in mountains and foothills, the strongest Santa Ana windstorm in more than a decade across Los Angeles and Ventura counties, according to the National Weather service.
Dangerous winds led to Southern California Edison shutting off power to thousands of residents to prevent its electric system from sparking a wildfire. By Tuesday afternoon, nearly 7,500 customers across Los Angeles and Ventura counties had their power shut down. Edison is considering shutoffs for another 400,000 residents as winds pick up in the area.
“It’s bad. It’s like an inferno,” Lori Libonati, a Palisades resident who evacuated, told the Los Angeles Times.
As the fire quickly spreads across the area, multiple people have left their cars and fled on foot. Traffic is gridlocked as people evacuate the neighborhood, and bulldozers have pushed 30 abandoned vehicles to clear a path for fire crews and evacuations on Palisades Drive and Sunset Boulevard .
“It looks horrible,” George Hutchinson, who lives in an apartment on Sunset Boulevard and Temescal Canyon, told the Times. “You can keep seeing houses burn. It jumps and it’s crazy. Traffic is gridlock — there are three ways in and out of this town and it’s all packed. Lots of chaos.”
This is a developing story.