A 1,200-acre fire threatens homes in western Los Angeles. 
The above video is in the second link below – NBC live updates.
The Wall Street Journal reports Pacific Palisades Wildfire Prompts Evacuations for Thousands as Strong Winds Fuel Flames.
The Los Angeles Fire Department ordered residents in the Pacific Palisades to leave the area immediately as firefighters sought to slow the spread of a more than 1,200-acre blaze. Approximately 30,000 people are under evacuation orders, LAFD Chief Kristin Crowley said at a press conference Tuesday night. No injuries have been reported.
The fire was first reported at approximately 10:30 a.m. local time, Crowley said. At the time, winds were measuring approximately 25 miles an hour with gusts of up to 50 mph. The wind and surrounding topography have made it difficult to fight the growing blaze, she said.
The National Weather Service warned of damaging winds forecast for much of Los Angeles and Ventura counties Tuesday and Wednesday. Across both counties, forecasters predicted wind gusts of 50 to 80 miles an hour and up to 100 mph in the area’s mountains and foothills.
“This is about as bad as it gets in terms of fire weather,” the National Weather Service office in Los Angeles said in a post on X Monday evening.
NBC Live Updates
NBC News has California Wildfires Live Updates.
More than 42,000 customers without power in Los Angeles area
There were 42,032 homes and businesses without electricity in Los Angeles County tonight as the region has been battered by Santa Ana winds, according to tracking site poweroutage.us.
Utility Southern California Edison warned the high winds, which are set to continue through tomorrow, could bring down trees and power lines.
New fire starts in hills above Pasadena
A new fire has started this evening in the hills above Pasadena, California.
The Close Fire is near the entrance to Eaton Canyon and is estimated to have consumed 10 acres, city of Pasadena spokesperson Lisa Derderian said tonight.
A Los Angeles County Fire Department captain told NBC Los Angeles that the fire had quickly grown to 20 acres and had the potential to explode to 500 acres.
Derderian described the blaze as “spreading quickly.”
Air quality an issue in Malibu, other parts of Los Angeles County
Air quality in parts of Los Angeles County will be unhealthy because of the Palisades Fire, the South Coast Air Quality Management District said.
The biggest impact will be in northwestern coastal Los Angeles County, including Malibu, which is near the fire, the county Public Health Department said.
“Predicting where ash or soot from a fire will travel, or how winds will impact air quality, is difficult, so it’s important for everyone to stay aware of the air quality in your area, make plans, and take action to protect your health and your family’s health,” Dr. Muntu Davis, health officer for Los Angeles County, said in a statement.
Palisades Charter High School, community theater burn
As the Palisades Fire continued to spread, it claimed more structural victims, including buildings on the area’s high school campus and the adjacent Theater Palisades.
NBC Los Angeles was on scene with live coverage as flames roared from multiple structures at Palisades Charter High School and seemed to all but destroy the theater.
Both are in the center of the community that’s home to roughly 24,000 people, all of whom have been ordered to evacuate.
80,000 Without Power
Here is different video on X that shows Devastating Fires burning homes.
“You Are Not Going to Save Your House“
Wow. I can’t imagine how it must feel to be told that and ordered to leave.
Best wishes.
Adding Another Fire Video and More X Comments
“Hard to understand this fire if you don’t know Los Angeles geography but the northwest area of the city is literally on fire. LAFD using bulldozers to push through knots of abandoned cars. Every cop in LA now activated. Fire acreage has doubled to 3000. Long night ahead.”
“It was just reported that Cal fire head to ground all fire fighting aircraft because of the hazardous High winds”
Entire Neighborhoods Now on Fire
There is an error in X (Twitter) that prevents me from embedding links
Here are two More links: https://x.com/matt_vanswol/status/1876774145247052182
what’s worse, not removing the dried brush and undergrowth around neighborhoods and in the neighboring mountains, or not testing and having a proper water system for firefighting?
for bonus points explain why a series of open resevoirs or storage tanks could not be built on hillsides and mountains above residential areas to provide gravity fed water to fight fires when the power goes down.
Hopefully people will wake up and move out of California permanently.
Will Elon run for mayor of LA in his spare time?
better than the rabbit excrement we have now.
Apparently some people just didn’t believe the evac order. I’d estimate the chance that this guy, his dog and whomever else is with him survives to be VERY low.
https://x.com/SiaKordestani/status/1876845562328146405?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Why are preventative measures never enacted or followed?
$$$$
Apparently it is climate nonsense from the left.
I know I will only feel better if my firefighters are diverse. Let it burn 🔥 if they’re not.
The LA Fire Dept passed a “racial equity plan” to end “systemic, institutional, and structural racism” in LA. Part of it is a chart to map out the race of every employee to make sure they’re racially diverse enough
Yeah, thank goodness their fire departments are diverse.
No doubt man-made global warming is to blame for the fires and lack of water.
Perhaps if we cut more CO2 emissions immediately, the fires will go out by themselves?
Of course, anyone who claims this is due to overbuilding is a racist.
Maybe they can issue a new tax to fund diverse Fire Wardens.
This so that when conditions are such that outbreak of fires is expected they can have spotters on the ground working so as to catch things early.
Stitch in time saves nine.
Tried and true formula for success.
Its all the fault of some hick in a double-wide outside of French Lick using a gas kitchen stove.
/s
NO! We need to increase CO2 so the air acts like a natural fire extinguisher 🙂
LA mayor cut fire department funding 17.6 million months before the wildfires. More solid lib leadership.
They needed the money to care for their homeless. [lol]
funny isn’t it, they could be using the homeless to clear the brush out of the hillsides, and housing them in tents while they worked for the LA City Corp,or some such group, and they’d be getting paid, getting off the meth, etc. and everybody wins..
I don’t think so. You want some drug addled homeless guy with a cig dangling from his mouth clearing dry brush? Although the meth guys would get a lot of work done.
I lived in LA in the late 60 and early 70. The area where fires occur is basically straight up and down plus the brush goes up like gasoline. Winds at the speeds they are talking about mean the fires are a blast furnace of heat,which in all probably cannot be stopped. My heart goes out to those burned out. Those not will get to deal with the new California insurance rate setting system. I think most we not be able to afford rates after this next year when the rates will be affected by these fires. The next up if rains come mud slides through the fire ravaged ares to add insult to injury.
Values will need to decline a lot to reflect that insurance will be impossible.
The brush looks nice and all “natural”; unfortunately, it should be clear-cut and concreted over if people wish to live in fire canyons.
Want a natural look … paint the concrete green.
The Brady Bunch had an AstroTurf backyard when they lived in the area.
Astro turf is illegal where I live in Northern CA.
The Woolsey fire in 2018 destroyed the Malibu neighborhood where a family member was living. Same phenomenon this time – once a fire starts, high winds and dry tinder turn it into a massive inferno. Kind of bewildering we know how destructive these wildfires are but so little is done to mitigate them in populated areas!
There has been virtually no rain here in LA this rainy season. I’ve seen just enough to barely get the ground wet a couple times. The wind gusts have been ferocious. Power went out for 3 hours last nite, about 6:30-9:30. Saw transformer arc a few blocks over after my power went out. Peak winds were supposed to be 10pm Tues., to 5am Wed. Lucky there haven’t been more fires, though now there are 3 major. Altadena Eaton fire last nite, which has new areas under mandatory evacuation, heading into La Canada/Flintridge, to the west this morning.
Are the fires starting from power lines down and transformer arcing?
I think enough of LA is concrete and dense with stucco housing that is safer from fire.
Palisades is a super nice area with trees, open space and canyons.
California Health equity map says 90+%ile.
https://map.healthyplacesindex.org/?redirect=false
only concrete is fire resistant, stucco is merely a concrete coating over a wood frame. Embers will get into the eaves or the framing and consume the structure.
After the great fire in London, it was mandated all structures had to be made of stone, London hasn’t burned down since.
but you are right LA is dense..
When I lived in SoCal the first year there was a massive fire. The next year another. Then another. Then another. It happened every year. That’s when I decided as a young man to never buy a home in disaster prone areas. Disasters can still happen but the odds go drastically down. I have empathy for these people but they were well aware of the risks. Hope everyone makes it out alive to include animals.
everything is easily preventable if there was the political will and if the people weren’t clueless guppies glued to their phones.
Firebreaks, brush clearance and remediation, sprinkler systems, amongst a host of simple effective ways to prevent fire from spreading.
its amazing how fast everyone has forgotten how to think through a problem and solve it.
Trump famously said Finland “rakes” their forests to prevent wildfires. They use little tractors to clear highly flammable brush.
In California, prescribed burns are more common because it’s cheaper. Give Cal Fire the right funding and permitting and wildfires would be smaller and less dangerous.
LAFD’s new chief’s top priority is recruiting more LGBT firefighters though. She’s said so herself many times. All that stuff you mention comes after.
Not surprising. I remember in the early 1990s it was LA county that changed the requirements to be a firefighter for women. You used to have to be strong enough to carry a person on your back down 30 stories….they literally changed to being able to drag a person out. DEI isn’t new and has ruined safety for so many.
Wet years followed by dry in CA, there’s going to be fires…
Cal fire knows this and frequently asks for more money to do prescribed burns to manage the risk. Guess how much of it they get.
Every place there’s fires, there’s a fuel load problem. Every fire group knows how to deal with this. The areas where they aren’t allowed to end up like this.
Not so simple. Pacific Palisades is a populated sloping hillside area. The fire began up the hill, but i don’t know yet if it was in the uninhabitable mountainous area above the community. If you look at Google Earth, you’ll notice all the shade trees and hedges around the homes and along the streets in the Palisades. There is the fuel load. Unless all the shade trees and hedges are going to be required to be permanently cut down, the potential problem isn’t going to go away.
But it is pretty warm down there and the trees provide some shade and cooling to the area. They also anchor the hillside in wet weather.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t…
Natural or Arson ?
Over 1,000 Al Qaeda across Borders.
Just had other recent Terrorist attacks.
Headlines are “Unprecedented Fires”
Homeless have been doing things before and did not amount to this scale.
Maui fire still not explained Publicly.
Likely homeless, or just as likely or some inland domestic tweaker fire-freak as anything else. Yes, we can base theories on sheer conjecture or superstition if we care to. They had a real fun time with that in Medieval days.
Perhaps.
However after watching video of Woman burned alive on NY subway, Fire does come back to mind as primary weapon of War for thousands of years.
Lot of California coastline in same condition as LA yet Fire is in LA.
Lessens notion of natural caused origin.
but yeh it’s conjecture.
Drones off east coast, nobody knows nothing about either.
Must be coincidence.
Homeless start way more fires than tweakers. Look it up.
homeless is often a synonym for tweakers.
This scale, has to do with the ferocity of the wind. No stopping the fire once it got started, either in Palisades or Altadena. 50+ mph wind gusts at times. Palisades had a fire decades ago during a wind event, destroying a number of homes. This fire was worse. Palisades is an up scale area. Doubtful it was started by homeless.
All it takes is someone who knows what happens in LA region. Then waits for opportune time to make a move.
If there were fires up and down coast from LA that would suggest natural causes. This does not appear to fit that scenario.
With everything so out of control, being suspicious as to cause is appropriate.
Human sourcing of Fire most likely cause.
add: In a residential area with all the surveillance apparatus available to upscale areas and a Fire gets out of control with nobody noticing it starting?
An Arsonist would know how to do that but someone Homeless just burning for heat.is questionable.
Surveillance is only value in a situation like this is someone is live monitoring. Too often, recordings are only used during the post mortem.
keep your guesses and conjecture to yourself. You don’t know anything. Just stop.
Apparently there are eyewitness accounts to Arson being started in LA.
So maybe check your own reality out realityczech.
I pointed out where the slivers of evidence pointed.
This was not a natural event but had Human intervention which makes this highly likely an act of Terrorism.
If it can be done in LA it can be done in any major populated Area across America.
After hearing that there were going to be damaging 100 mph winds, Rahm Emanuel was overheard saying to Gavin Newson “never let a good crisis go to waste” and then lit a Molotov cocktail and threw it.
Having been burned out of a house in my teens, I have the utmost empathy for anyone who has to try and recover from a fire. It’s when you find out “insurance” isn’t living up to the promises and everything you thought important is just gone, turned into ashes. *Not a wildfire, short in the wiring of the garage
However having been to these areas in CA more than once, I was always amazed by the amount of overgrown brush and dry tinder just left to pile up as a source for a hot fast burning fire. Pushed by the normal Santa Anna winds I’ve always been surprised half of Southern CA hasn’t been torched to the ground for some time now.
They can change the probability and severity of these types of events with a little sanity around land/forest management techniques. It’s not an unknown method of operation.
I’m always surprised by the number of people who cry “We’ve lost everything, including our prized photos”. I never understand why people don’t back their stuff up to online storage. It’s not like this is a new concept.
Also, many people have(had) very expensive art hanging on their walls that is now ashes. I wonder how many had proper insurance on the art? Seems to me if you live in one of these fire prone areas that you want to maintain a minimalist physical existence.
California have had a wild fires for millions of years man shows up and builds houses in the areas where wildfires have happened over and over . Man increases risk because they start fires on purpose or by accident . Man proclaims that the reason for wildfires is climate change and not the bad decisions man made . It is like building a house in the desert and crying about water problems and then blaming it on the weather .
Now do hurricanes.
Too much rain dancing!
The climate hoax continues to hammer insurance.
Yes. And the insurance costs are rising rapidly. At some point the costs get so high that most people will be unable to afford insurance at all. They will then demand that government insure them. Oh wait. That is already happening.
Good news. Then they can complain about the government even more than they already do.
There is a great book on that, When All Else Fails: Government as the Ultimate Risk Manager. Insurance by anyone should involve the pre-positioning of money for an expected payout. But categorical, knee-jerk government-haters refuse to do this (and love to bray like donkeys about it) — until they show up with their hands out. Exhibit A: Wall Street in 2008 (but also the masses who took on all those mortgages). I agree that government does guarantee a lot of stuff that shouldn’t be, though. This creates moral hazard, like the bottom third who can’t afford kids, etc., but have them anyway, expecting someone to pick up the bill, if they think that much at all, between sessions of making whoopee.
Don’t worry Papa, people will be able to afford that expensive insurance by screaming that their social security is not enough and they need higher COLAs and we should lift the caps so they get more. Then they’ll tell us “I paid for it.” Either way, the solution to all of our problems is more socialism and more trashing of the planet.
Btw, the internets are abuzz about aliens finally revealing themselves to give us puny humans a spanking for trashing the planet, I could only hope it’s a really good spanking.
Climate change is mankind building houses in flood zone areas or fire prone areas or drought areas then complaining that the weather did not change in those areas to accomodate the bad decisions men made to build houses in those areas .
A lot of ground cover in earlier coastal California was thin grasses which would burn off quickly. Bringing astronomical amounts of water to the area means lots more growing stuff, and when the classic Santa Ana winds blow, it is dry and hot. Having a house near all the pretty growth (or in the South, near the hurricane coast) is, in an inflationary time (especially for insurance, replacement costs), a shock. So the Fed’s interests rates screwups, in a complex world, intertwines with human construction trends, to generate a nasty shock. People didn’t set aside reserves for this, they just looked forward to their dream house fantasy.
Am sure you are sleeping well knowing Alejandro Mayorkas is on the Job.
Climate changes, doesn’t it? NYC is built on the site of a glacier. Stupid, huh?
Yes. We know that because of science and scientists. They tell us that there has been a mile of ice over New York every 100,000 years, over and over again. And they can tell us why.
Do you know why?
I have friends, colleagues, and relatives in and near LA, and I have visited many times. The images are terrifying and tragic, and I truly hope for the best.
But the truth is that LA has been on an unsustainable course for decades — problems with water supply, traffic (obviously), housing, energy grid etc. And the politicians are absolute rubbish. The homeless crisis hasn’t helped.
I just read that Tom Hanks and his wife have a $26 *million* mansion in the Palisades area which is under threat from the fire. Forgive me, but who the F needs a house that size? I sure hope Mr Hanks isn’t preaching about climate change.
I follow Tesla news online (the “TSLAQ” community) and there are so many stories of Tesla fans buying every new model or having multiple Teslas at the same time. And what percent of cars on the LA freeways have more than one occupant?
(A separate issue is what happens when Teslas or other EVs catch fire; the batteries burn at extreme heat and require huge amounts of water — in very short supply now — to extinguish.
Humans aren’t meant to live in cities like LA. But good luck to all those poor souls out there right now. (Excepting perhaps Mr Hanks.)
People vote for those politicians
His house is 14000 sq feet.
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/tom-hanks-rita-wilson-real-estate-portfolio
The reason it’s estimated at 26 million is location, location, location.
If it burned, it would not cost 26 million to replace since a large portion of that cost is the land.
That house was purchased in 1988 so was grandfathered in to so many absurd code exemptions in the years since I bet it would cost 10x to rebuild today than it did originally (even adjusted for inflation). The real story here are all the property owners who supported silly mandates because their properties were exempt are about to learn a very hard lesson.
Is it true CA requires homes to be earth quake proof? In the mountains in CO, codes require roofs and homes to be fire proof and your wood pile has to be 30 feet from your cabin. FL requires homes to be hurricane proof. Always after the damage is done.
No one ever got elected becasue they prevented a problem.
Only, if they blamed others for the problem, then did nothing themselves.
You are looking at the first house they bought in 1988.
Scroll down to see the current 26 million dollar one. It was built in 1996, updated in 2006 and Hanks bought it in 2010. I suspect it’s up to code on most things.
Praying for everyone’s safety.
This is scary. I never even thought my house (northern CA) was at risk when I bought it in 2015 (didn’t even know what a wildfire was back then), yet now on sites like Redfin, the house is rated as severe (7/10) for fire factor (22% chance of being in a wildfire in 30 years). Last year the rating was only 5/10 (the first year that such a rating was assigned). I’m expecting my insurance to go up like crazy again this year. Insurance has more than doubled since 2015 when I bought it.
22% in 30 years means on average you will get 1 fire event every 150 years.
I personally wouldn’t worry about something that rare. It also seems strange to me that something that’s expected to happen once every 150 years is rated 7/10.
They say that’s the probability now and it’s likely to go up due to climate change:
“Based on this property’s distance to wildfire risk areas and burnable vegetation, it has a severe risk of wildfire.”
“This property’s wildfire risk is increasing as weather patterns change.”
Forest and land Fire manegment has been ignored and forgotten until fire erupts. It;s not Climate Change it’s FOREST MISMANEGMENT.
I’m sure massive additions of housing tracts have nothing to do with it, eh?
“Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!”
― William Shakespeare,
Macbeth
That’s wild. When did this situation arise? I hadn’t heard about it . Best of luck to folks out there.
No hyperbole from that NWS post. Expect it to get much worse overnight into Wednesday morning – very dry and extremely windy.
A tidbit not covered above because … why not?
First female and LGBTQ Fire Chief in the LAFD: Kristin M. Crowley (Paramedic; with some fire management experience; think she ever stands up to city hall to demand resources?)
Well, 30K is only <0.1% of the state population.
Colton arsonist?
https://x.com/i/status/1876699773199138839
All I know is that all of these periodic and predictable Malibu (and Malibu-adjacent) disasters make everyone’s insurance rates go up, and that’s not right. There should be some kind of insurance silo-ing for people who choose to live in mountains, coasts, flood zones. I’m not saying I know how to do that, just saying there has to be a way to do it where everyone doesn’t collectively pay for these fairly predictable losses.
Or maybe, California should invest in proper land management and include prescribed burns. Might be a great idea to make the utilities clear out around power lines and such. Locally, the power company has scoured all lines in the county and have had trees cut back or outright removed as well as replacing damaged poles or deteriorating settings for poles. They’ve even had creeks/ runoff ditches redug and cleared. Maintenance is the key to keeping anything in prime condition, and many businesses (gov as well) prioritize profits over reinvesting for the future. Least that’s how it appears to me.
Like much of CA, most of the houses are built right on top of each other. There are many small, curving streets and limited access to neighborhoods.
See:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pacific+Palisades,+Los+Angeles,+CA/@34.0776876,-118.5667093,2466m/