On a typical summer weekend, the traffic is bumper to bumper on the streets leading to the world-famous Hollywood sign, and residents worry that tourists coming to the 2028 Olympics will overwhelm the area and potentially cause a massive fire.
“The way things are right now, we wouldn’t survive during the Olympics at all,” says Kim Kevorkian, a longtime resident of the nearby Lake Hollywood neighborhood.
“My worst fear is that there’s going to be a fire up here, and we’re not going to all be able to get out,” Kevorkian told the I-Team.
The Hollywood sign wasn’t built as a tourist attraction. It was built in 1923 to advertise “Hollywoodland,” a new housing development.
But in recent years, the sign is heavily promoted as a tourist attraction on social media and by the city of LA.
Every summer weekend, out-of-towners and locals cause gridlock in the area, even blocking intersections to get selfies with the Hollywood sign behind them.
During a two-week period in June, city cameras documented over 52,000 cars jamming into the area, compare that to a two-week period in March when around 16,000 cars were counted by those cameras.
“When you’re building tourist attractions, you’re building infrastructure to accommodate so many different numbers of people,,” said Jeff Zarrinam, the head of the Hollywood Sign Trust, which maintains the sign. “That was never taken into consideration here.”
Kim Kevorkian and her neighbor Lisa Hope contacted the NBC4 I-Team last year in the wake of the tragic fire that killed more than 100 people and ravaged Lahaina, Maui, a traffic clogged area with few ways in and out, similar to the neighborhoods surrounding the Hollywood sign.
“A wind driven fire up here with only two ways in and out — (it’s) just a recipe for disaster,” Hope told the I-Team.
The women provided NBC4 with videos and photos of outrageous and sometimes dangerous behavior by tourists, trying to get an up-close look at the sign.
One set of photos documents a tourist who hauled in a piano and blocked the street to to film a TikTok video of himself playing the piano with the Hollywood sign in the background.
Other photos show tourists who got out of their cars to urinate.
The biggest concern is the large number tourists who smoke in this area where the hills are covered by dry brush; the area is ranked by the LA Fire Department as one of the highest fire risk zones in LA.
During an interview with Kevorkian and Hope in the Lake Hollywood area, the I-Team documented numerous tourists smoking and tossing their smoldering cigarette butts even though signs say smoking in the area is forbidden.
“We have ‘no smoking’ signs everywhere, but people continue to smoke. They continue to ignore the signs, Hope said.
Residents like Kevorkian and Hope have taken part in a city committee looking at ways to control the crowds and avoid a potential fire disaster.
One idea being considered is providing shuttle service from Hollywood Boulevard to the Hollywood sign area, similar to the shuttle service which LA County provides to the Hollywood Bowl on busy summer nights.
“I would be in favor of a shuttle service. It makes sense. You’re bringing up less cars,” said Zarrinnam of the Hollywood Sign Trust.
Residents have also proposed making parking on the streets near the sign for ‘residents only,’ and they’ve gathered enough signatures for that. They said they have yet to gain the full support of their City Councilmember Nithya Raman.
The I-Team reached out five times to Raman’s office to discuss this safety issue but so far has not received a response.