Screaming Los Angeles residents abandoned their cars to escape a fast-moving wildfire closing in on the picturesque celebrity enclave, witnesses said, describing scenes straight out of a Hollywood disaster movie.
Tuesday’s storm turned a seemingly typical brush fire into a raging inferno within hours, sending flames toward the Pacific Palisades area.
Thirty thousand people were ordered to evacuate as the fire surrounded a neighborhood in the west of the city, quickly exploding from 10 hectares to several thousand.
Pacific Palisades borders Malibu and is a haven of hilly streets and winding roads nestled against the Santa Monica Mountains and stretching to beaches along the Pacific Ocean.
But Pacific Coast Highway, the main route in or out, quickly became clogged, forcing many drivers to abandon their vehicles near Sunset Boulevard as the flames approached.
One resident, Marsha Horowitz, said firefighters told people to get out of their cars as the fire, fanned by winds that sometimes exceed 100 mph (160 km/h) in the mountains and foothills, approached.
“The fire was right next to the cars,” she said.
Another Pacific Palisades resident told ABC News she rushed home from her job in Hollywood after hearing about the evacuations.
After leaving the car, she went home to get her cat. While she was running to safety, burning pieces of palm tree fell on her.
“Palm leaves hit me, I ran into a car,” said the woman, who did not give her name.
“It’s scary. Like in a horror movie. I’m screaming and crying walking down the street.”
Some evacuees described seeing houses on fire as they fled.
Hollywood actor James Woods was among the celebrities who were forced to leave their properties.
Actor Steve Guttenberg, also a Pacific Palisades resident, urged people who left their cars to leave their keys inside so the vehicles could be moved to make way for fire trucks.
“This is not a parking lot,” Guttenberg told KTLA. “I have friends up there and they can’t evacuate.”
Bulldozers later cleared the abandoned vehicles to make way for emergency vehicles.
Jennifer Aniston, Bradley Cooper, Tom Hanks, Reese Witherspoon, Adam Sandler and Michael Keaton also have homes in Pacific Palisades, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
People were fleeing the wildfire in the nearby Los Angeles suburb of Topanga Canyon, where Ewan McGregor has a home.
One resident, Melanie, told KTLA that she tried to get out, but the path was engulfed in flames and she was forced to return home.
She was trying to take Palisades Drive down to the Pacific Coast Highway and said she had to “make a U-turn very quickly because the flames were coming down the hill to the road.”
“I would drive right into the fire,” she said. “We’re stuck up here. I don’t see any flames, but I know they’re close.”
Residents of Venice Beach, about 10 km away, also reported seeing flames.
Kelsey Trainor said ash was falling everywhere as the fire jumped from one side of the road to the other.
“People were getting out of their cars with their dogs, babies and bags, crying and screaming,” she told the Associated Press news agency.
“The road was just blocked, like completely blocked for an hour.”
Ellen Delosh-Bacher told the Los Angeles Times how she rushed from downtown Los Angeles to her home, where her 95-year-old mother and their two dogs live.
She, too, came to a standstill at Sunset Boulevard and Palisades Drive.
Ms Delosh-Bacher described a fire exploding behind a nearby Starbucks and police racing down the road shouting to stranded motorists: “Run for your lives!”
She left the car, with the keys still in the ignition, and ran half a mile to the beach.
“This is like the apocalypse,” she said.
