Students at Pepperdine University were ordered to take refuge in several of the school’s fire-resistant buildings early Tuesday morning, as a wildfire scorched through the area just north of its Malibu campus.
The university issued a shelter-in-place order around 1 a.m. on Tuesday. Video shared with local news channel Fox 11 showed masked onlookers watching the Franklin Fire roar just outside the school’s library.
The blaze shut down stretches of Pacific Coast Highway and over 2,000 nearby structures were put under evacuation orders. Pepperdine officials urged students and employees to make their way to the school’s library or student center and shelter there, rather than try to navigate the surrounding roads.
From inside the campus’ fire-resistant buildings, students were able to get an alarming view of the Franklin Fire’s violent path.
“We saw the flames jump over the Malibu Canyon,” Gabrielle Salgado, a journalism undergraduate who sheltered inside the library, told The New York Times.
The shelter-in-place order, which impacted around 3,000 students and campus employees, was lifted around 8 a.m. Tuesday. In-person classes and final exams remained canceled as power outages continued to impact buildings on campus.
Pepperdine University spokesperson Michael Friel told the Times there were no injuries and no major damage to school structures, but several smaller spot fires had burned on campus.
As of early Tuesday evening, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection estimated the Franklin Fire had spread to over 2,800 acres in the Malibu area.