It starts with thick grey smoke billowing from a hillside Los Angeles neighbourhood studded with celebrities.
Within an hour and a half, the view looking north from a webcam perched metres from the famous Santa Monica Pier is dominated by the rapidly spreading Palisades fire, which has forced the evacuation of thousands.
That was Monday morning (early Tuesday AEDT). By early afternoon, a camera pointing the other way from a helicopter base west of Pacific Palisades captures the rapid containment efforts.
Powerful water-bombing helicopters hover, waiting their turn to drain tanks for the resources needed to fight a fire destroying homes, clogging roadways and straining resources.
But Tuesday’s sunset is the most dramatic vision captured so far by the University of California San Diego’s AlertCalifornia network.
As the sun dips, flames are suddenly visible from Santa Monica, about seven kilometres away, not just smoke.
Within half an hour, those flames are not just tendrils but a blazing glow, apparently spreading visibly in a short period of time.
Pacific Palisades is dotted with celebrity residences and memorialised by the Beach Boys in their 1960s hit Surfin’ USA.
Roadways became impassable when scores of people abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot, leaving the only road in and out of resident Kelsey Trainor’s neighbourhood.
Devastating wind storm worsens conditions for LA wildfires
“We looked across and the fire had jumped from one side of the road to the other side of the road,” said resident Kelsey Trainor, who said the only road in and out of her neighbourhood was blocked.
“People were getting out of the cars with their dogs and babies and bags, they were crying and screaming.”
Two other wildfires were burning in the hours before dawn on Wednesday (late Wednesday AEDT). One near a nature preserve in the inland foothills spread so rapidly that staff at a senior living center had to push dozens of residents in wheelchairs and hospital beds down the street to a parking lot.
Another prompted evacuations in Sylmar, a San Fernando Valley community that is the northernmost neighbourhood in LA.
– Reported with Associated Press
