Cooler temperatures, calmer winds and a chance of rainfall in the coming days are forecast to help firefighters as they battle a wind-driven blaze in steep, rugged terrain that has driven thousands, including celebrities, from their homes in Malibu.
The weather improved so much on Wednesday that meteorologists said all red flag warnings, which indicate conditions for high fire danger and the notorious Santa Ana winds, were discontinued. The conditions allowed firefighters to have “a lot of success” despite the nearly inaccessible terrain, the CalFire assistant chief Dusty Martin said.
Still, some 20,000 residents remained under evacuation orders and warnings on Wednesday evening from the blaze, dubbed the Franklin fire, which was only 7% contained over 6 sq miles (16 sq km).
It is unclear how the blaze started. Officials said nine structures had been destroyed and at least six others had been damaged, though crews had only surveyed about 25% of the affected area, said the deputy chief Albert Yanagisawa of the Los Angeles county fire department.
Much of the devastation occurred in Malibu, a community of about 10,000 people on the western edge of Los Angeles known for its stunning bluffs and famous beaches.
Flames burned near horse farms, celebrities’ seaside mansions, and Pepperdine University, where students were ordered to shelter in place on campus for a second night on Tuesday.
Faculty members are determining how best to complete the semester, which ends this week. Final exams were postponed or canceled, depending on the class, a university spokesperson, Michael Friel, said. An early analysis showed little to no damage to structures on campus, the university said.
Lonnie Vidaurri’s four-bedroom home in the Malibu Knolls neighborhood is one of those destroyed. After evacuating to a hotel in Santa Monica with his wife and two young daughters, a neighbor called to tell Vidaurri that firefighters would need to break into his house.
“It’s pretty torched all around,” Vidaurri said. He expects that the family’s pet bunnies did not survive the fire, and that they lost most of their things. “My girls cried, obviously, but it could have been worse.”
Mimi Teller, a Red Cross spokesperson who worked in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, said many people arrived in their pajamas and were “definitely in shock”.
“Nobody even had a backpack, it was, ‘Get out now,’” Teller said. “One lady didn’t even have a leash for her dog, she just scooped them up.”
Shawn Smith said he was asleep early on Tuesday when someone knocked on his RV at 3am to wake him up to evacuate the Malibu RV Park.
“You could see the fires rolling in, in over the canyon,” he said. “It was like ‘Holy crap, this is real.’”
He returned on Wednesday to find that the RV park had been saved – firefighters stopped the flames just before they entered the area.
“We got lucky,” he said.
Cher, one of many celebrities with homes in Malibu, evacuated from her Malibu home when ordered and is staying at a hotel, her publicist, Liz Rosenberg, said on Tuesday.
And Dick Van Dyke said in a Facebook post that he and his wife, Arlene Silver, fled as the fire swept in. The actor later told NBC’s Today that neighbors helped him get out.
“I was trying to crawl to the car. I had exhausted myself. I couldn’t get up,” said Van Dyke, who turns 99 on Friday. “And three neighbors came and carried me out, and came back and put out a little fire in the guesthouse and saved me.”
The fire erupted shortly before 11pm on Monday and swiftly moved south, jumping over the Pacific Coast Highway and extending all the way to the ocean. It was propelled by Santa Ana winds, fierce seasonal winds that blow dry air from the interior toward the coast.
Alec Gellis stayed behind on Monday night to save his home in Malibu’s Serra Retreat neighborhood from the flames. He used pumps in the home’s swimming pool to help spray water over the house and surrounding vegetation, turning the lush area “into a rainforest”.
Gellis said there were flames within 5ft (1.5 meters) of the home on all sides. “The whole canyon was completely lit up.”
Utilities preemptively shut off power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses, starting on Monday night, to mitigate the impacts of the Santa Ana winds, whose strong gusts can damage electrical equipment and spark wildfires.
As of Wednesday afternoon, electricity was still out for roughly 600 Southern California Edison customers, and the majority of those were in Los Angeles county, said a spokesperson for the utility, Gabriela Ornelas.
“We have been making significant progress,” she said.
Outages in Malibu were not included in that figure, Ornelas said. Some 3,300 customers in the Malibu area remained without power, due to safety shutoffs and for firefighter safety. Power was first shut off to most customers in Malibu on Monday evening.
The Woolsey fire that roared through the area in 2018, killing three people and destroying 1,600 homes, was sparked by Edison equipment. Asked on Wednesday if Edison equipment was involved in the Franklin fire, Ornelas referred all questions regarding the cause to fire officials.
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