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LOS ANGELES: Firefighters on Wednesday battled a ferocious wildfire in Los Angeles suburbs, home to many Hollywood celebrities, which devoured buildings and sparked panicked evacuations as hurricane-force winds fueled rapid blaze growth.
Frightened residents abandoned their cars on one of the only roads in and out of the upscale Pacific Palisades area, fleeing on foot from the 3,000-acre (1,200-hectare) blaze engulfing an area packed with multimillion-dollar homes in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Firefighters used bulldozers to push dozens of vehicles — including expensive models such as BMWs, Teslas and Mercedes — to one side, leaving many crumpled and with their alarms blaring. Some celebrities posted comments and pictures on social media platforms.
More than 1,400 firefighters were on the ground, with hundreds more on the way, California Governor Gavin Newsom said.
US media reported one firefighter among several injured in the Palisades.
Hundreds of firefighters swarmed the area, attacking the blaze from the ground and the air, while crews worked through steep terrain to cut back vegetation and create firebreaks.
“Extreme fire behavior... continues to challenge firefighting efforts for the Palisades Fire,” with winds gusts up to 60 miles (95 kilometers) per hour expected to continue through Thursday, said the LA fire department in its latest update.
Around 30,000 people were ordered to evacuate the fast-spreading flames, which leveled multiple homes as powerful winds spread embers far and wide.
Velma Wright, 102, was evacuated from a care facility as embers and flames approached in Pasadena, an AFP photographer saw, from where dozens other residents were moved.
Trees and vegetation around the prestigious Getty Villa Museum were burned, but the structure and collections were spared, the museum said in a post on X.
The Getty, set up by US oil billionaire and collector J. Paul Getty and one of the world’s richest art museums, houses Greek and Roman antiquities in a replica Roman country home.
Actor James Woods posted a video on X showing flames engulfing trees and bushes near his home as he got ready to evacuate, and shortly afterward said all the fire alarms were going off.
“I couldn’t believe our lovely little home in the hills held on this long. It feels like losing a loved one,” Woods said.
Across town, on the northern edge of Los Angeles, another fire broke out in Eaton Canyon, near Pasadena, quickly consuming 200 acres (81 hectares) Tuesday night, according to Angeles National Forest officials.
The city of Malibu west of Los Angeles told its residents via social media post to “prepare to evacuate quickly if fire conditions worsen. Evacuate now, especially if you need extra time or have pets/livestock.”
US President Joe Biden — who was in Los Angeles for a planned announcement on new national monuments — said he was “being frequently briefed on the wildfires” and has offered “any federal assistance that is needed.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, who has a house in California, said she was praying for “fellow Californians who have evacuated.”

The fire erupted midmorning and swelled quickly, taking many residents by surprise.
One man, who gave his name as Gary, told broadcaster KTLA that hot ashes were raining down on his community of Sea Ridge.
“There was smoke in the distance, and I was assured that it would not come over the hill... Five minutes later, it’s coming down the hill,” he said.
“Everyone panicked, that’s when everybody made a run and went to go and pack their houses up.”
Evacuee Kelsey Trainor said she saw the fire explode in size as she was fleeing.
“By the time we got to the bottom of the hill, which is about two or three miles, there were flames on both sides of the road, and it became gridlocked,” she said.
“No one knew what to do. Everyone was honking their horns. There’s flames all around you.
“I could see people walking with suitcases, with their dogs, children. An elderly woman was really visibly upset and in tears.”
Pacific Palisades resident Andrew Hires told AFP he got a text alerting him to the fire as his child was at the dentist about to have a tooth extracted.
“We pulled off the mask and ran to the car,” he said.
The fire came as the area was being hit by seasonal Santa Ana winds that forecasters said could develop into the worst windstorm in a decade, with gusts of up to 100 miles (160 kilometers) an hour expected.
“This looks pretty, pretty concerning,” said meteorologist Daniel Swain.
“And what’s going on now is only just the beginning, because weather conditions are going to get a lot worse.”
With a huge pall of smoke visible over the whole of Los Angeles, events throughout the area were canceled, including a red-carpet premiere of Jennifer Lopez’s new film “Unstoppable.”
Wildfires are an expected part of life in the US West and play a vital role in nature.
But scientists say human-caused climate change is altering weather patterns.
Southern California had two decades of drought that were followed by two exceptionally wet years, which sparked furious vegetative growth — leaving the region packed with fuel and primed to burn.

NIMRUD: A decade after jihadists ransacked Iraq’s famed Nimrud site, archaeologists have been painstakingly putting together its ancient treasures, shattered into tens of thousands of tiny fragments.
Once the crown jewel of the ancient Assyrian empire, the archaeological site was ravaged by Daesh fighters after they seized large areas of Iraq and neighboring Syria in 2014.
The precious pre-Islamic artefacts destroyed by the jihadists are now in pieces, but the archaeologists working in Nimrud are undaunted by the colossal task they face.
“Every time we find a piece and bring it to its original place, it’s like a new discovery,” Abdel Ghani Ghadi, a 47-year-old expert working on the site, told AFP.
More than 500 artefacts were found shattered at the site, located about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from Mosul, the city in northern Iraq where IS established the capital of their self-declared “caliphate.”
Meticulous excavation work by Iraqi archaeologists has already yielded more than 35,000 fragments.
The archaeologists have been carefully reassembling bas-reliefs, sculptures and decorated slabs depicting mythical creatures, which had all graced the palace of Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II nearly 3,000 years ago.
Seen from above, the pieces of the puzzle gradually come together. Shards of what just several years ago was a single artefact are placed side by side, protected by sheets of green tarpaulin.
Bit by bit, the image of Ashurnasirpal II appears on one bas-relief alongside a winged, bearded figure with curly hair and a flower on its wrist, as the restoration brings back to life rich details carved in stone millennia ago.
Another artefact shows handcuffed prisoners from territories that rebelled against the mighty Assyrian army.
Partially reconstructed lamassus — depictions of an Assyrian deity with a human head, the body of a bull or a lion and the wings of a bird — lay on their side, not far from tablets bearing ancient cuneiform text.

“These sculptures are the treasures of Mesopotamia,” said Ghadi.
“Nimrud is the heritage of all of humanity, a history that goes back 3,000 years.”
Founded in the 13th century BC as Kalhu, Nimrud reached its peak in the ninth century BC and was the second capital of the Assyrian empire.
Propaganda videos released by IS in 2015 showed jihadists destroying monuments with bulldozers, hacking away at them with pickaxes or exploding them.
One of those monuments was the 2,800-year-old temple of Nabu, the Mesopotamian god of wisdom and writing.
IS fighters wreaked havoc at other sites too, like the once-celebrated Mosul Museum and ancient Palmyra in neighboring Syria.
The jihadist group was defeated in Iraq in 2017, and the restoration project in Nimrud began a year later, only to be interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic and restart in 2023.
Mohamed Kassim of the Academic Research Institute in Iraq told AFP that “until now, it has been a process of collection, classification and identification.”
About 70 percent of the collection work has been completed at the Assyrian palace site, with about a year’s worth of fieldwork left before restoration can begin in full force, said Kassim, noting it was a “complex operation.”
His organization has been working closely with Iraqi archaeologists, supporting their drive to “save” Nimrud and preserve its cultural riches, through training sessions provided by the Smithsonian Institution with financial support from the United States.

Kassim said that the delicate restoration process will require expertise not found in Iraq and “international support” due to the extent of the “barbaric” destruction in Nimrud.
“One of the most important ancient sites of the Mesopotamian civilization,” according to Kassim, Nimrud is a testament to a golden age of “the art and architecture of the Assyrian civilization.”
The site was first excavated by archaeologists in the 19th century and received international recognition for the immense lamassu figures that were taken to Europe to be exhibited in London’s British Museum and the Louvre in Paris.
Other artefacts from Nimrud have been on display in Mosul and Iraq’s capital Baghdad.
The site has also attracted figures like British author Agatha Christie, who visited there with her archaeologist husband.
On a recent tour of Nimrud, Iraq’s Culture Minister Ahmed Fakak Al-Badrani hailed the “difficult” work carried out by archaeologists there, collecting broken pieces and comparing them to drawings and photographs of the artefacts they attempt to reconstruct.
The vast destruction has made it impossible, at least for now, to ascertain which antiquities were stolen by Daesh, the minister said.
And the process will take time.
Badrani said he expects that it will take 10 years of hard work before the marvels of King Ashurnasirpal II’s palace can be seen again, complete.