A man carrying a bag of belongings and paintings fled his Pacific Palisades home on a bicycle Tuesday night as wildfires rapidly approached his neighborhood.
Surrounded by smoke and flying embers, the man wearing goggles was one of about 30,000 people under evacuation orders for the Palisades Fire, which began Tuesday morning in dry and extremely windy conditions in coastal Los Angeles County. There was only one person.
“My backyard is on fire,” he told NBCLA. “I’m out of here.”
When the man rode off at around 9:30 p.m., several nearby homes were already on fire, making for a tragic scene. He gave the painting to NBCLA reporter Robert Kovacik and asked him to keep it until he could retrieve it.
The Palisades fire was one of three wildfires that spread at devastating speeds from Tuesday into Wednesday morning. A red flag warning is in effect for large areas of Southern California through Thursday.
Three large wildfires are burning in the Pacific Palisades, Sylmar and Altadena amid powerful storms.
The Palisades Fire, which broke out Wednesday morning in a community of about 23,000 people located between the Santa Monica Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, had grown to about 3,000 acres. The location is approximately 8 miles northwest of Santa Monica and 16 miles east of Malibu, just off the Pacific Coast Highway.
The Eaton Fire, which started near the foothills community of Altadena, also prompted evacuation orders in the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles after the fire broke out Tuesday evening.
The Hearst Fire broke out late Tuesday in Sylmar, located in Los Angeles’ northern San Fernando Valley.
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