A wildfire has been raging in Los Angeles (Image: Getty)
A huge fire has destroyed homes, burnt cars and let to the evacuation of 30,000 people in southern California.
A fast-moving wildfire broke out on Tuesday (January 7) in foothills northeast of Los Angeles hours after another blaze tore through the city’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood on the coast.
The fire in Eaton, Altadena, started near a nature preserve just before 6.30pm local time with flames spreading so rapidly that staff at a care home had to push dozens of residents in wheelchairs and hospital beds down the street to a parking lot where they waited in their bedclothes for ambulances and other vehicles to take them to safety.
Another blaze to the west in Pacific Palisades started on Tuesday morning and burned out of control into the night. High winds helped fuel that fire, with the blaze in Pacific Palisades exploding from 10 acres to over 2,900 acres within hours.
A state of emergency has been declared with US president releasing federal funds to support the areas affected.
Fires broke out in Eaton, Altadena, and Pacific Palisades (Image: Getty)
Homes and cars have been burned (Image: Getty)
The Pacific Palisades fire swept through a Los Angeles hillside dotted with celebrity homes. In the dash for safety, roads were clogged and scores of people abandoned their vehicles, fleeing on foot.
A traffic jam in Palisades Drive stopped emergency vehicles getting through so a bulldozer was brought in to push the abandoned cars to the side and create a path, according to the LA Fire Department.
California Governor, Gavin Newsom, who was in southern California to attend the naming of a national monument by Mr Biden made a detour to the canyon to see the impact of the “swirling winds and the embers”. He said he found “not a few — many structures already destroyed”.
Officials did not give an exact number of structures damaged or destroyed in the Pacific Palisades wildfire, but they said over 13,000 were at risk and about 30,000 residents were under evacuation orders.
The blaze began around 10.30am local time, just after the start of a windstorm which the US National Weather service warned could be “life threatening” and the strongest to hit southern California in more than a decade.
Officials said the exact cause of the fire was unknown and no injuries had been reported.
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Beachfront homes in Malibu go up in flames (Image: Getty)
The Pacific Palisades area is studded with celebrity homes (Image: Getty)
About 25 miles northeast in Altadena, the Eaton fire was burning. The winds were expected to increase overnight and continue for days, producing isolated gusts which could top 100mph in the mountains and foothills. Some of these areas haven’t seen substantial rain in months.
Mr Newsom said: “By no stretch of the imagination are we out of the woods.” He added the worst of the winds were expected between on Tuesday night and in the early hours of Wednesday local time. The Governor declared a state of emergency on Tuesday.
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