The beaches are empty in Malibu as a wildfire tears through swaths of the iconic Southern California coastline, consuming homes and vehicles and forcing residents – including legendary actor Dick Van Dyke – to flee their coveted hillside properties.
The Franklin Fire caught many residents by surprise as it exploded late Monday and for a time was burning through an area larger than five football fields every minute.
The inferno is so intense that it’s worsening already extreme fire conditions by altering local wind patterns and “bending them towards and into the fire,” the National Weather Service in Los Angeles warned Tuesday morning. The fire calmed slightly in the afternoon with most of its growth on the eastern side, but firefighters had a difficult time building containment lines because of the rough terrain.
“No one had time to get dressed, everybody jumped in the car, it was like, ‘Get out of here!’” she told CNN. She barely had enough time to run down to her barn to release her horses. “We could not leave them in the barn. Thank God we didn’t because the barn burned down.”
Nearby, students on Pepperdine University’s usually idyllic campus sheltered in place for hours inside dormitories and libraries as flames illuminated the distant sky. All on-campus finals are canceled, and the remaining students will be allowed to leave Wednesday morning, the school announced.
“You’re just in survival mode, you are just doing what you can,” he told CNN.
Here’s the latest:
– Explosive growth: The fire’s footprint exploded from 100 acres at 11:54 p.m. Monday to more than 4,000 acres by Wednesday afternoon, according to the Los Angeles County Fire and CalFire officials – at one point nearly tripling in size in just one hour. It is 7% contained.
– Homes swallowed by fire: A preliminary count shows at least seven structures are destroyed and eight are damaged, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said, but more assessments are needed. No deaths or injuries have been reported, the city of Malibu said in a news release. Firefighters will continue water drops overnight.
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