Pacific Palisades Evacuees Describe Escape From Wildfire

Against a towering backdrop of black smoke with an ominous orange glow, the stately homes and broad boulevards of the Pacific Palisades looked small and exposed on Tuesday.

The fire forced residents, including some celebrities, to flee the seaside neighborhood, which is on the west side of Los Angeles. The scenic Sunset Boulevard became an escape route. Cars clogged the road on Tuesday, all headed away from Pacific Palisades except for the emergency vehicles that wailed their way toward the blaze.

In one hilly neighborhood just southeast of the fire, a wall of smoke loomed high overhead. Olga Arango, 66, had been at work cleaning a home there — the owners were out of town — when she decided that it was time to go.

“I saw on the phone that we had to evacuate,” Ms. Arango said in Spanish, as she packed her car and considered her best route home to Van Nuys, Calif. “I didn’t finish, but I can come back tomorrow.”

In the Palisades Highlands, a neighborhood at the edge of Topanga State Park, the means of escape were very limited. “There’s basically one road into the Highlands and one road out,” said Melissa Grant, a lawyer who lives in a wood-frame townhouse there.

Ms. Grant, 69, tried to use that road, Palisades Drive, on Tuesday to reach safety with her dog, Abbie. But then a nearby elementary school caught fire, sending flames dancing onto the roadway and forcing her to turn her car around. Afraid to go home, Ms. Grant tried her luck on a local fire road. But it too had become a dead end, blocked by locks and chains.

So Ms. Grant found shelter with nearby homeowners who seemed distant enough from the flames, at least for the moment. “You can see the fire and smoke right there — oh, wow, there’s a helicopter,” she said, speaking by phone from the home that was not hers. “It’s scary.”

Shawn Hubler and Orlando Mayorquín contributed reporting.