What happened
Three wildfires that started Tuesday in Los Angeles County were spreading rapidly, whipped along by strong Santa Ana winds over dry vegetation. About 30,000 people were under evacuation orders and 300,000 households were without power. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said more than 1,400 firefighters and first responders were working overnight to save lives and fight the wildfires, all of which were 0% contained.
Who said what
The largest of the conflagrations, the Palisades Fire, was “burning through five football fields a minute,” CNN said. The rush to escape from the coastal enclave of Pacific Palisades caused a traffic jam on Palisades Drive that “prevented emergency vehicles from getting through,” The Associated Press said, and bulldozers were “brought in to push the abandoned cars to the side.”
Police ordered drivers to leave their cars and run because the “fire was literally right on top of them,” Officer Tim Estevez told The Washington Post. “People were getting out of the cars with their dogs and babies and bags, they were crying and screaming,” Palisades Park resident Kelsey Trainer told the AP.
What next?
The situation “will get significantly worse before it gets better,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said at a briefing Tuesday. The strongest winds were expected to last through this morning, but “the vegetation will become progressively drier the longer the wind event goes on,” and “some of the driest vegetation will actually come at the end,” so “there’s going to be a very long period of high fire risk.”