California residents flee wildfire, leaving cars behind

Screaming Los Angeles residents left their cars behind to flee a fast-moving wildfire as it closed in on a picturesque celebrity enclave, eyewitnesses said, describing scenes straight out of a Hollywood disaster movie.

A windstorm whipped a seemingly typical brush fire into a raging inferno within a matter of hours on Tuesday, sending the blaze racing towards the Pacific Palisades area.

Thirty thousand people were ordered to evacuate as the conflagration surrounded the neighbourhood in the west of the city, exploding rapidly from 10 acres to several thousand in size.

Bordering Malibu, Pacific Palisades is a haven of hillside streets and winding roads nestled against the Santa Monica Mountains and extending down to beaches along the Pacific Ocean.

But the Pacific Coast Highway, the main route in – or out – quickly became gridlocked, leading many motorists to ditch their vehicles near Sunset Boulevard as the flames drew near.

One resident, Marsha Horowitz, said firefighters told people to get out of their cars as the blaze, fanned by gusts sometimes topping 100mph (160km/h) in the mountains and foothills, approached.

“The fire was right up against the cars,” she said.

Another Pacific Palisades resident told ABC News that she rushed home from her job in Hollywood once she heard about the evacuations.

After abandoning her car, she went home to grab her cat. While running to safety, flaming pieces of palm tree fell on her.

“I’m getting hit with palm leaves on fire, I ran into a car,” said the woman, who did not give her name.

“It’s terrifying. It’s like a horror movie. I’m screaming and crying going down the street.”

Some evacuees described seeing homes burn as they fled.

Hollywood actor James Woods was among celebrities forced to flee their properties.

Actor Steve Guttenberg, also a Pacific Palisades resident, urged people who abandoned 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 abandoned vehicles to open the route for emergency vehicles.

Jennifer Aniston, Bradley Cooper, Tom Hanks, Reese Witherspoon, Adam Sandler and Michael Keaton also have homes in the Pacific Palisades, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

People fled wildfire flames in the nearby Los Angeles suburb of Topanga Canyon, where Ewan McGregor has a home.

One resident named Melanie told KTLA she tried to get out, but the path was engulfed by flames and she was forced back home.

She was trying to take Palisades Drive down to the Pacific Coast Highway and said had to make “a very fast U-turn because there were flames coming down the hill to the road”.

“I would have been driving right into the fire,” she said. “We’re stuck up here. I don’t see any flames but I know they’re close by.”

Residents in Venice Beach, some six miles (10km) away, reported seeing the flames, too.

Kelsey Trainor said ash fell all around as the fire jumped from one side of the road to the other.

“People were getting out of the cars with their dogs and babies and bags, they were crying and screaming,” she told the Associated Press news agency.

“The road was just blocked, like full-on 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, hit gridlock at Sunset Boulevard and Palisades Drive.

Ms Delosh-Bacher described fire exploding behind a nearby Starbucks and police rushing down the road shouting to stuck motorists: “Run for your lives!”

She left her car, keys still in the ignition and ran half a mile down to the beach.

“This is like an apocalypse,” she said.