(Updated with details, third source of fire)
More than 30,000 people evacuated their homes around Los Angeles, in the United States, on Wednesday due to violent forest fires.
A first fire burned 1,200 hectares in Pacific Palisades, a Los Angeles neighborhood where many celebrities reside, located between the cities of Malibu and Santa Monica, officials said.
Two other fires, near Pasadena and in the San Fernando Valley, were also spreading rapidly inland, authorities said.
The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a fire alert from Tuesday to Thursday for most of Los Angeles County after a prolonged dry spell.
Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said earlier at a news conference that more than 25,000 people in 10,000 homes were at risk.
Witnesses reported that several homes were engulfed in flames as they fled the hills of Topanga Canyon, where the fire spread.
Thousands of people tried to flee the flames by car on Wednesday morning, causing traffic jams, while motorists had to abandon their vehicles as the fire approached.
“People left their cars on Palisades Drive. The fire is burning the hillside. The palm trees – everything is going away,” said Cindy Festa, a resident who was evacuating by car.
Firefighters, who used water bombing planes to fight the flames, failed to control the early blaze and California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency.
The state has deployed personnel, fire trucks and planes elsewhere in Southern California because of the fire risk in the rest of the region, he added. California obtained federal grants to put out the three fires.
A second fire, called the Eaton Fire, broke out later near Pasadena, where 400 hectares burned, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) said.
Firefighters then indicated that a third fire, called the Hurst Fire, had broken out in Sylmar, in the San Fernando Valley, northwest of Los Angeles. The fire, which grew to 202 hectares, prompted the evacuation of some nearby residents, according to Cal Fire.
More than 220,000 homes and businesses in Los Angeles were without power Tuesday evening, according to data from PowerOutage.us.
US President Joe Biden said in a statement that he had offered federal support to fight the fire.
(Reporting Jorge Garcia, Mike Blake and Daniel Cole in Los Angeles, Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, California, with Shubham Kalia, Gursimran Kaur and Kanjyik Ghosh in Bangalore, French version Camille Raynaud and Noémie Naudin, editing by Kate Entringer)
