Residents evacuating wildfires in the Pacific Palisades were in danger as roads were clogged and fast-moving flames threatened evacuation routes.
When the ignition occurred off Sunset Boulevard and Palisades Drive, some drivers abandoned their vehicles by about 2 p.m., when the fire reached Pacific Coast Highway.
Fire officials ordered residents who were unable to flee their neighborhoods to evacuate while firefighters worked to extinguish the fire along Sunset Boulevard.
Ellen Desroches Batcher was in downtown Los Angeles when she first heard about the fire and rushed to her home, where her 95-year-old mother, caregiver and two dogs live.
She soon found herself stuck in traffic at Sunset Boulevard and Palisades Drive.
A fire then broke out directly behind a Starbucks along the road. Police began running down the road, telling people stuck in traffic to “run for your lives,” Desroches-Bacher said.
She left the car with the keys in the ignition and drove half a mile to the beach. She stood in gray and orange smoke, trying to reach her mother.
“This is like the apocalypse,” she said. “I live on a ridge. If there was a fire on Paris Drive, I’d be pretty bad.”
George Hutchinson, who owns a hair salon called George & Co. in the Pacific Palisades, was standing on the roof of his apartment building at Sunset Boulevard and Temescal Canyon, watching the fire’s movements.
Hutchinson watched the fire move down toward the coast and Malibu.
“You can see the flames rising on the hillside and then it flares up. Now it’s so dark you can’t see anything,” he said. “The wind is so strong that the fire is jumping around. It’s pretty spooky.”
Hutchinson’s home is within the fire evacuation zone and his car is loaded and ready to go, but traffic was heavy Tuesday afternoon so he decided to wait a little longer.
“It looks terrible,” he said. “You can keep watching the houses burn. It’s jumping up and down and it’s crazy. The traffic is congested. There are three roads in and out of this town and they’re all congested. There’s been a lot of chaos. .”
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