Wildfire explodes in Malibu, damaging homes and spurring mass evacuations

A ferocious wildfire fanned by strong winds spread rapidly early Tuesday in Malibu, spurring evacuations along the coast and threatening homes while firefighters struggled to contain the flames.

The eastern half of Malibu was ordered evacuated. The rest of the city and portions of unincorporated Los Angeles County were under an evacuation warning affecting roughly 18,000 people. More than 2,000 structures are covered by the evacuation order, and an additional 6,000 are under evacuation warnings.

Dubbed the Franklin fire, the blaze was moving at a fierce pace, fanned by strong Santa Ana winds, and had exploded to nearly 2,600 acres as of 11 a.m. with no containment, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said during a news conference Tuesday morning that a “minimal number” of homes had been destroyed, though he did not have an exact count of structures damaged. He urged residents to limit the use of lawn sprinklers to maintain water pressure for firefighters.

About 700 firefighters were battling the fire Tuesday morning on the ground, building containment lines, as air tankers dropped water on the blaze. The aircraft were able to fly through most of the night and into the early morning even amid heavy winds, Marrone said.

“We’d really like to button this fire up and get some containment by this afternoon,” Marrone said. “I believe that the winds are going to be continuing, so that’s going to create challenges for the Fire Department and for the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department with evacuations. We are going to have a coordinated air and ground assault on this fire for as long as it takes.”

The fire was reported a few minutes before 11 p.m. Monday along Malibu Canyon Road in the hills north of Pepperdine University.

Flames were reported on both sides of Pacific Coast Highway, with the fire jumping the road in at least two locations — the area around Malibu Pier and around Malibu Road and Webb Way, just next to Malibu Colony Plaza, where a Ralphs supermarket is located, according to the city.

Structures were “impacted” along Malibu Knolls Road, where there are a few homes and a church, and in the area of Sweetwater Canyon Drive, where there are more than a dozen homes, the city said.

Matt Myerhoff, a spokesperson for the city, told CBS News on Tuesday morning that the Malibu Pier had not been damaged in the fire, which had been a concern overnight as the fire marched toward the ocean.

“I think the preponderance of structures being impacted around here are going to be homes,” he said.

A sheriff’s patrol car was damaged in the fire, but the deputy was not hurt, said L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna.

“I cannot tell you how much we appreciate when a deputy or another official comes to your door, or you get a notification that there is a warning or specifically an order, you need to evacuate,” Luna said. “It saves lives, and it actually impacts the lives of our first responders, because if they have to come in to save a life, they’re putting their own lives at risk.”

Residents described having just minutes to flee as they saw a storm of embers rain down, with hillsides and trees bursting into flames, and having precious little time to decide what to take with them.

Shortly after midnight, sheriff’s deputies went door to door and used air horns to wake residents and urge them to leave.

“I think I’m in shock right now,” said Malibu City Council member Bruce Silverstein, who evacuated shortly after he smelled smoke at his home in the hills above City Hall around 11 p.m.

His wife got an alert about the fire and by 11:20 the flames licked the hillside while the sky grew ever redder. The couple packed their bags and drove on Pacific Coast Highway toward Santa Monica to check into a hotel.

The lawn and trees around the home were “just burning wild,” said Silverstein, who watched as fire gradually approached his property through the internet-connected cameras mounted around his house.

“My house has come very close to catching fire multiple times in the last couple of hours,” Silverstein said. The bushes and fence at the top of the property burned, a sight rendered in video, but the fire department showed up and doused the area.

“We thought it was completely under control,” Silverstein said. “Then a bunch of embers came flying into the yard.”

Evangelist Jonny Constantine said he was at the beach Monday night, walking and praying to try to relieve some of the stress from his work, when the winds began to pick up. A wind advisory showed up on his cellphone, but he didn’t initially think much of it, he said.

It was nearing 11 p.m. when he got another notification on his phone: A fire had erupted in Malibu. The fire was small at the time, but grew quickly, prompting evacuation orders. Constantine drove to his friend’s house along Carbon Canyon from Pacific Coast Highway. The orange glow of flames greeted him.

“There was smoke everywhere,” he said. “The whole sky was on fire.”

In a way, Constantine said, driving to the beach allowed him to be more aware of the fire and better able to warn his friend while most of the city slept. “God didn’t let me go to sleep that night,” he said.

When James Perry, 42, got the first emergency notification about the fire at 11:45 p.m. Monday, he and his wife were already packing belongings in their Los Flores home. About 20 minutes earlier their electricity had been cut.

Without cellular service or WiFi, Perry said his family relied on the emergency notifications to prepare and get themselves out of their home — just a canyon over from the growing inferno.

“As soon we as came down (Los Flores Canyon Road) near Duke’s Malibu, we saw the halo of the fire, smoke and the light,” Perry said. “That’s when we realized it was closer than we thought.”

This isn’t the first time that a fire has forced the family from their home. They were evacuated from their previous house in Topanga for two weeks during the Woolsey fire in 2018. Living in a high-risk fire zone has changed the way they think about emergency preparedness, Perry said.

“We don’t have anything expensive on site, and we keep our important documents off site and have printed (copies) with us,” he said. “We love living where we live, but it feels like (fires) are happening more often.”

Jonathan Torres, spokesman for L.A. County Fire Department, told the Los Angeles Times that hundreds of firefighters responded to the fire and had been hampered by winds of 50 to 80 miles an hour.

At around the time the fire ignited, there were gusts of up to 65 mph reported. By around 3:30 a.m. Tuesday, the winds were weakening slightly, with gusts in the 40-mph range, said National Weather Service meteorologist Todd Hall. But patterns seen in past Santa Ana wind events “suggest winds should ramp up around daybreak,” Hall said. Meanwhile, relative humidity was quite dry, as low as 5%.

The cause of the fire was unclear.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said early Tuesday that the governor had been briefed on the blaze and the state had secured a Fire Management Assistance Grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help with fire suppression costs.

“Fire officials and first responders are working relentlessly to protect lives and property from the Franklin fire. California is grateful for this federal support, which bolsters these efforts. I urge all residents in affected areas to stay alert and follow evacuation orders,” Newsom said in a statement Tuesday.

There were several power outages in the area of the fire Tuesday morning. Some electricity was cut off for firefighter safety, and other outages were part of widespread public safety power shutoffs — deliberate outages meant to limit the chances that damaged utility equipment could start a fire, according to David Eisenhauer, a Southern California Edison spokesperson.

Across the region, almost 40,000 customers had their electricity cut through planned shutoffs.

Around 1 a.m. Tuesday, the fire had moved into the Serra Retreat area and was threatening structures. The community is less than a mile northwest of Malibu Pier. There are private homes in addition to a Catholic retreat and conference center noted for its views.

A six-mile stretch of Pacific Coast Highway was ordered closed east of Corral Canyon Road and west of Las Flores Canyon Road, the city of Malibu said. Las Virgenes Road, which continues as Malibu Canyon Road on the way to the coast, is closed south of Mulholland Highway all the way to Pacific Coast Highway, a six-mile stretch of road, the city added.

An evacuation warning along Pacific Coast Highway extended as far east as the Los Angeles city limits, on the border of the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, and as far west as Zuma Beach.

On Tuesday, there were about a dozen residents at the Palisades Recreation Center, which was serving as an evacuation center.

Mimi Teller, spokesperson for the Red Cross, said the organization had the evacuation center was up and running about two hours after word of the fire arrived at 2:30 a.m. The center has space for about a dozen people, she said, but overall the property can take up to 800.

Two evacuees, Jessica Jones and Matthew Ryder, said they saw the flames coming around 11:30 p.m. down a ridgeline overlooking the ranch they rent in Serra Retreat. The pair rushed to grab the essentials — important documents, clothing and their three goats and pot belly pig — before the fire made its way to their home.

Fleeing a wildfire is stressful enough, they said, but adding livestock to the mix can really complicate matters. The kid goats, Willie and Russell, were easy enough to wrangle into the back of the couple’s pickup truck, along with the goats’ mother, Ginger. But the 1-year-old pig, Penelope, put up a fight when it was time to leave.

“She was screaming her head off,” Ryder said. “She doesn’t like to be picked up usually.”

The fire reached their property as the couple left around midnight. They stopped on the side of Pacific Coast Highway to plan where to go next, ultimately deciding to sleep in their truck before heading to the evacuation center early Tuesday.

“It was insane,” Jones said. “The bright red flames and glow of the fire were all around the ridge line as we were leaving.”

While Pepperdine University was in the heart of the evacuation area, the university had directed students and others on campus overnight to remain in the Tyler Campus Center or Payson Library. Around 3:30 a.m., the school said the worst of the fire had pushed past the campus.

The campus lifted its shelter-in-place order early Tuesday after assessing conditions after sunrise, according to the university. Spot fires continue to flare up around the school, so officials encouraged students and staff to remain on campus and stay off Malibu roads.

Pepperdine has a well-documented “shelter-in-place” protocol when wildfires threaten Malibu, given how difficult it can be to evacuate the campus quickly on narrow roads during a crisis.

The university says the campus’ buildings are built with fire-resistant materials, and brush is cleared at least 200 feet away from structures. The school took some criticism for its shelter-in-place plan after the campus used it during the Woolsey fire in 2018, with some students nervous about remaining on campus.

The university, however, has said Pepperdine’s practice of having students shelter in place on campus during wildfires has lasted for decades and is supported by the county fire department. Besides the Woolsey fire, it has been utilized for all fires since 1993, including the Old Topanga in 1993, Calabasas in 1996 and the Canyon and Corral fires in 2007.

Classes and final exams were canceled Tuesday on the Malibu campus. Public schools in Malibu were also closed because of the fire.

Pepperdine student Nick Gerding told KTLA-TV on Tuesday morning that hundreds of students sheltered in place in the campus library overnight as the flames moved closer.

“Once we got news it jumped Malibu Canyon Road, you could really see it come over the hill,” Gerding said. “It was so close that we got the warning to stay away from the windows because the trees that were a good 20 feet ahead of it were on fire.”

It wasn’t clear if the burning trees were a part of a defensive fire set by crews, he said. Meanwhile, some 200 to 300 students lined up to grab breakfast while another few hundred slept, Gerding said.

Even though Pepperdine’s process for the fire made him feel relatively safe, the experience still frightened Gerding, he told KTLA.

“My brother attended Pepperdine here about five years ago and they had a campus fire … and did the same process,” he said. “I was familiar but it was a panic I’d never experienced before, so I wasn’t ready for that.”

Malibu resident Alp Toygar said he had taken a drive through Malibu in the early morning hours for a closer look at the conflagration.

“Flames are everywhere,” he told the Times around 3:30 a.m. “People are running away in vehicles from Malibu both directions on the coastal highway. I just passed through the blazes … on the highway. No traffic lights. Police cars and fire trucks are everywhere.”

The National Weather Service has issued a “Particularly Dangerous Situation” red flag warning for wide portions of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, which will last through Tuesday afternoon. Gusts of up to 80 mph are possible, and relative humidity is forecast to be alarmingly low, while vegetation is extremely dry.

The weather service said that within the Franklin fire area, strong and damaging winds from the north and northeast were expected to peak around sunrise Tuesday, and last through late Tuesday morning.

Relative humidity levels were as low as 9% just before midnight. It could fall even lower — forecasters said that relative humidity could fall to as low as 1% in Oxnard and Thousand Oaks in nearby Ventura County.

This is the second time this fire season that the weather service has issued a Particularly Dangerous Situation red flag warning. The last time the warning was issued was on Nov. 5, and a day later, the Mountain fire ignited in Ventura County and, whipped by powerful winds, razed more than 240 buildings. It became the third most destructive wildfire in Southern California since 2013.

The dry, strong Santa Ana winds are being driven by a system of high pressure building in the Great Basin, which is sending air hurtling through canyons and mountain passes to the coast, where there is low pressure.

The region has also been quite dry. Since the water year began on Oct. 1, just 0.14 inches of rain has fallen in downtown Los Angeles. That’s sharply below the average for this time of the season, when 1.87 inches on average has already fallen. And there’s not too much hope for significant rain for the next week in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

Malibu and neighboring communities in Thousand Oaks, Oak Park and Agoura Hills saw tremendous destruction in the 2018 Woolsey fire, which destroyed more than 1,600 structures and burned about 97,000 acres.

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