Palisades fire: 'Worst is yet to come' as winds gain speed

Firefighters are in for a long and dangerous night battling the Palisades fire as fearsome winds are forecast to grow even stronger and could hinder efforts to fight the blaze by air.

The fire ignited at Piedra Morada Drive at 10:30 a.m. and — fueled by intense wind gusts — had scorched 2,921 acres by early evening, forcing more than 30,000 residents to flee their homes. The extreme wind event blasting Southern California is forecast to peak between 10 p.m. Tuesday and 5 a.m. Wednesday, posing a serious challenge to overnight efforts to combat the growing blaze.

“This event is not only not over, but it is just getting started and will get significantly worse before it gets better,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said in a briefing just after 4 p.m. Tuesday.

The strongest and most widespread winds are “yet to come,” Swain said, as is the lowest humidity.

Winds were expected to pick up into the evening, possibly making an air attack unfeasible if sustained wind speeds break 30 to 40 mph, said L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone around 4 p.m. Tuesday.

Although it might be frustrating for residents to see firefighting aircraft grounded, extreme winds can make those efforts less effective, as water or retardant that is dropped is immediately dispersed by the wind, said Gov. Gavin Newsom, who visited the site of the Palisades fire Tuesday.

“We can be up there all day, making people feel good,” he said, “but we’re not doing any good.”

The combination of extreme winds and critically low humidity create a dangerous recipe for new fires to break out overnight.

“We are anticipating — hopefully we’re wrong — but we’re anticipating other fires happening,” said Newsom, adding that the state had strategically positioned resources in areas of high fire risk.

Swain echoed the governor, saying, “Unfortunately, I do think that is likelier than not that that does, in fact, occur.”

By around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, that prediction had come true as a fire broke out in the foothills of Pasadena and quickly grew to 20 acres, according to Pasadena spokeswoman Lisa Derderian. The Pasadena Fire Department was on scene and concerned about the potential for rapid spread amid the fierce winds.

Another fire broke out Tuesday night in the hills above Altadena near Eaton Canyon. The fire has burned around 400 acres by 8:14 p.m. and prompted evacuations in the area west of the Eaton Canyon Golf Course, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

Meanwhile, the Palisades fire continued to charge forward, threatening thousands of homes and scores of businesses.

On Tuesday afternoon, crews were racing to save the Getty Villa and Palisades Charter High School from flames lapping their grounds. The Reel Inn, a seafood restaurant that has been a Malibu institution for more than three decades, appears to have burned in the fire.

The National Weather Service predicts that the ongoing windstorm will be the most destructive to have hit the Los Angeles region since 2011.

The weather service issued a “particularly dangerous situation” warning for extreme fire danger in wide swaths of Los Angeles and eastern Ventura counties, prior to the ignition of the Palisades fire. That warning is set to expire Thursday.

Although the worst of the winds are expected Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, fire danger will remain high throughout the week.

“The vegetation will become progressively drier the longer the wind event goes on,” said Swain. “So some of the strongest winds will be at the beginning of the event, but some of the driest vegetation will actually come at the end, and so the reality is that there’s going to be a very long period of high fire risk.”

Recent rainfall patterns are exacerbating the fire danger, said Alex Hall, director of the UCLA Center for Climate Science.

“Southern California has experienced a particularly hot summer, followed by almost no precipitation during what is normally our wet season,” he explained. “And all of this comes on the heels of two very rainy years, which means there is plenty of fuel for potential wildfires.”

Climate change has a part to play in this particularly dangerous event, Swain said.

There’s not much evidence that climate change has increased the likelihood of extreme wind events. There is evidence, however, that it is increasing the overlap between these wind events and periods of extremely dry vegetation conditions during what would typically be the wet season, he said.

Newsom echoed the sentiment that fire danger is no longer contained to a fire season.

“We were here not too long ago [for] the Franklin fire and, a few weeks prior to that, the Mountain fire,” he said. “November, December, now January — there’s no fire season. It’s fire year. It’s year round.”