Ferocious Malibu Wildfire Destroys Structures, Forces Evacuations
Los Angeles Times
(TNS)
LOS ANGELES — A ferocious wildfire fanned by strong winds burned through Malibu on Tuesday, destroying homes, triggering power outages and forcing thousands to evacuate along the coast in the dark while firefighters struggled to contain the flames.
The eastern half of Malibu remained under an evacuation order Tuesday. The rest of the city and portions of unincorporated Los Angeles County were under an evacuation warning affecting roughly 20,000 people.
The blaze, dubbed the Franklin fire, was reported a few minutes before 11 p.m. Monday along Malibu Canyon Road in the hills north of Pepperdine University. Fanned by strong Santa Ana winds, the blaze moved at a fierce pace, exploding to roughly 2,850 acres as of Tuesday afternoon with no containment, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said during a news conference Tuesday evening that at least seven structures were destroyed and eight damaged, based on a preliminary aerial survey. Inspection teams have been assigned to the incident and a more accurate account of the destruction is expected tomorrow, he said.
More than 1,500 firefighters battled the fire on the ground Tuesday, building containment lines as air tankers dropped water on the blaze. The aircraft were able to fly through the night and into the early morning Tuesday even amid heavy winds, Marrone said.
“The entire fire area remains under threat,” he said on Tuesday evening. “As long as the current red flag conditions persist, strong winds and low humidities will continue to challenge firefighters on the line and in the air as they struggle to contain the stubborn fire.”
He urged residents to limit the use of lawn sprinklers to maintain water pressure for firefighters.
The blaze jumped Pacific Coast Highway in the early morning hours and continued to march toward the city’s historic pier, which officials said was not damaged. A sheriff’s patrol car was destroyed in the fire, but the deputy driving it was not hurt.
By Tuesday evening, average wind speeds around the fire zone had slowed to 15 to 25 mph — a considerable drop from peak wind gusts of up to 65 mph that were recorded when the fire first ignited, said National Weather Service Meteorologist Rose Schoenfeld.
“We still have very low relative humidity,” she said, “but the winds just aren’t there in the same amount, so the potential for that incredibly hazardous, rapid [fire] spread has really dropped off compared to late last night, early this morning.”
Wind speeds are expected to continuing dropping to 10 to 15 mph overnight, with the potential for peak gusts up to 40 mph, she added. Although fire danger is decreasing, the region still remains under a red flag alert until 6 p.m. Wednesday.
Marrone said helicopters will continue dropping flame retardants through the night to keep the fire in check, while hand crews will hike into steep mountainous terrain to try to establish containment lines on the ground.
“We want to wake up tomorrow morning and make sure that we at least start getting some containment,” he said. “We are going to take advantage of the nighttime, increased humidities and the lower temperatures to try to get the fire knocked down.”
Some residents were able to start assessing the damage in the light of day Tuesday.
Past the security gates of Serra Retreat is a small enclave of luxury properties that’s home to celebrities such as Patrick Dempsey, Dick Van Dyke and at one time Mel Gibson. Overnight, the fire caught many in the area by surprise. Pets were killed and several cars and homes burned, including one on Mariposa De Oro Street, residents say.
Van Dyke wrote on Facebook that he and his wife, Arlene Silver, evacuated from their home.
“Arlene and I have safely evacuated with our animals except for Bobo escaped as we were leaving,” he wrote, referring to his cat. “We’re praying he’ll be ok and that our community in Serra Retreat will survive these terrible fires.”
Alec Gellis, 31, was riding through the neighborhood on his e-bike checking on homes Tuesday afternoon. He and a friend stayed behind overnight to protect properties in the area. The fire, he said, broke out fast. Around 11 p.m. he was in his room when he heard people screaming outside and cars honking.
“The sky was red and the whole canyon was was lit up on the other side,” he said. “We were surrounded by flames. Literally everywhere you looked there was fire.”
He and his friend, 33-year-old Abel Rodgers, grabbed a hose connected to a machine that pumped water from the pool and began spraying down their home. Firefighters were busy trying to push back flames, so for five hours, the two men soaked everything they could, even venturing into neighbors’ yards to help put out spot fires.
Other Malibu residents described fleeing their homes chaotically in the dark with little time to decide what to take with them as the inferno raged around them. The strong winds whipped embers through the skies, casting an orange glow across the city as hillsides and trees burned.
Shortly after midnight, sheriff’s deputies went door to door across the city and used air horns to wake residents and urge them to leave.
“I think I’m in shock right now,” said Malibu City Councilmember Bruce Silverstein, who evacuated shortly after he smelled smoke at his home in the hills above City Hall around 11 p.m. Monday.
His wife got an alert about the fire, and by 11:20 p.m. the flames licked the hillside while the sky grew ever redder. The couple packed their bags and drove on Pacific Coast Highway toward Santa Monica to check into a hotel.
The lawn and trees around the home were “just burning wild,” said Silverstein, who watched as fire gradually approached his property through the internet-connected cameras mounted around his house.
“My house has come very close to catching fire multiple times in the last couple of hours,” Silverstein said. The bushes and fence at the top of the property burned, but the fire department showed up and doused the area.
“We thought it was completely under control,” Silverstein said. “Then a bunch of embers came flying into the yard.”
Evangelist Jonny Constantine said he was at the beach Monday night, walking and praying to try to relieve some of the stress from his work, when the winds began to pick up. A wind advisory showed up on his cellphone, but he didn’t initially think much of it, he said.
It was nearing 11 p.m. when he got another notification: A fire had erupted in Malibu. The fire was small at the time, but grew quickly, prompting evacuation orders. Constantine drove to his friend’s house along Carbon Canyon from Pacific Coast Highway. The orange glow of flames greeted him.
“There was smoke everywhere,” he said. “The whole sky was on fire.”
In a way, Constantine said, driving to the beach allowed him to be more aware of the fire and better able to warn his friend while most of the city slept. “God didn’t let me go to sleep that night,” he said.
When James Perry, 42, got the first emergency notification about the fire at 11:45 p.m. Monday, he and his wife were already packing belongings in their Los Flores home. About 20 minutes earlier their electricity had been cut.
Without cellular service or WiFi, Perry said his family relied on the emergency notifications to prepare and get themselves out of their home — just a canyon over from the growing inferno.
“As soon we as came down (Los Flores Canyon Road) near Duke’s Malibu, we saw the halo of the fire, smoke and the light,” Perry said. “That’s when we realized it was closer than we thought.”
This isn’t the first time that a fire has forced the family from their home. They were evacuated from their previous house in Topanga for two weeks during the Woolsey fire, which burned more than 96,000 acres in the region, in 2018. Living in a high-risk fire zone has changed the way they think about emergency preparedness, Perry said.
“We don’t have anything expensive on site, and we keep our important documents off site and have printed (copies) with us,” he said. “We love living where we live, but it feels like (fires) are happening more often.”
Fire crews working overnight were hampered by winds up to 50 mph, according to the National Weather Service. Around the time the fire ignited, winds were reported gusting up to 65 mph. Relative humidity was also extremely low at 5%.
The National Weather Service had issued a “Particularly Dangerous Situation” red flag warning for wide portions of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, which expired Tuesday afternoon as winds diminished.
This is the second time this fire season that the weather service had issued that type of red flag warning. The last time was on Nov. 5, and a day later, the Mountain fire ignited in Ventura County and, whipped by powerful winds, razed more than 240 buildings. It became the third most destructive wildfire in Southern California since 2013.
Mike Wofford, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said that there should be “considerably less” wind Wednesday.
Authorities are investigating the cause of the fire.
The state secured a Fire Management Assistance Grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help with fire suppression costs, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said Tuesday.
“Fire season is not a season. It’s year-round in the state of California,” Newsom said during a news conference in Colusa County on Tuesday. “We’re in the middle of December and yet we’re experiencing another wildfire in Southern California.”
Power outages, which began in the Malibu area on Monday, continued Tuesday afternoon. Some electricity was cut off for firefighter safety, and other outages were part of widespread public safety power shutoffs — deliberate outages meant to limit the chances that damaged utility equipment could start a fire during strong winds, according to David Eisenhauer, a Southern California Edison spokesperson.
Across the region, almost 40,000 customers had their electricity cut through planned shutoffs.
On Tuesday, there were about a dozen residents at the Palisades Recreation Center, which was serving as an evacuation zone.
Two evacuees, Jessica Jones and Matthew Ryder, said they saw the flames coming around 11:30 p.m. down a ridge line overlooking the ranch they rent in Serra Retreat. The pair rushed to grab the essentials — important documents, clothing and their three goats and potbellied pig — before the fire made its way to their home.
Fleeing a wildfire is stressful enough, they said, but adding livestock to the mix can really complicate matters. The kid goats, Willie and Russell, were easy enough to wrangle into the back of the couple’s pickup truck, along with the goats’ mother, Ginger. But the 1-year-old pig, Penelope, put up a fight when it was time to leave.
“She was screaming her head off,” Ryder said. “She doesn’t like to be picked up usually.”
The fire reached their property as the couple left around midnight. They stopped on the side of Pacific Coast Highway to plan where to go next, ultimately deciding to sleep in their truck before heading to the evacuation center early Tuesday.
Students at Pepperdine University — in the heart of the evacuation area — were told by the university to shelter in the Tyler Campus Center or Payson Library overnight rather than try to leave campus. Around 3:30 a.m., the university said the worst of the fire had pushed past the school.
The campus lifted its shelter-in-place order early Tuesday after assessing conditions after sunrise. Spot fires continued to flare up around the campus, so officials encouraged students and staff to remain at the school and stay off Malibu roads for the day.
At 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, students were once again asked to take shelter in the campus center or library and prepare to remain there over night.
Pepperdine has a well-documented “shelter-in-place” protocol when wildfires threaten Malibu, given how difficult it can be to evacuate the campus quickly on narrow roads during a crisis. The university says the campus’ buildings are built with fire-resistant materials, and brush is cleared at least 200 feet away from structures.
Classes and final exams were canceled Tuesday on the Malibu campus. Public schools in Malibu were also closed because of the fire.
Pepperdine student Matthew Morrison said hundreds of students and faculty sheltered in place in the library overnight as flames raced toward the campus.
The wind blew embers closer and closer to their building, setting palm trees aflame. Students were told to stay away from the windows in case the glass shattered, he said.
“It was terrifying,” Morrison said. “The fire was so intense, it felt like it was battering the windows.”
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(Times staff writers Brittny Mejia, Grace Toohey, Summer Lin, Jenny Jarvie and Clara Harter contributed to this report.)
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