Fast-moving wildfires raging through Los Angeles have left Hollywood movie actors and reality TV stars fleeing their hillside mansions, as wind-whipped blazes devastated affluent neighbourhoods along the coast.
More than 30,000 people have been put under evacuation orders in LA, and a state of emergency has been declared as the infernos swept through the Pacific Palisades, a ritzy area near Malibu popular with celebrities.
Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, said he was evacuated from Malibu and told people in the area to “stay safe”. On his social media, he said there were small fires on both sides of the road as he fled.
The reality TV star Heidi Montag and her husband, Spencer Pratt, lost their home to the flames. The couple were primary cast members of The Hills, the reality TV hit that chronicled the lives of young socialites, and married in 2009.
Pratt had filmed the fire spreading on Instagram, showing arid hills and black smoke. His sister, Stephanie, later confirmed her brother’s house had been destroyed, saying the wind was so strong that it was impossible to save the building.
In LA, film premieres were cancelled, including the British singer Robbie Williams’s biopic Better Man, and the Screen Actors Guild awards cancelled an in-person nominations announcement planned for Wednesday morning.
The actor Eugene Levy from American Pie and the TV show Schitt’s Creek evacuated on Tuesday, telling the Los Angeles Times while stuck in traffic, “The smoke looked pretty black and intense.”
Chet Hanks, the son of Tom Hanks, wrote on Instagram: “The neighbourhood I grew up in is burning to the ground.”
Human-caused climate breakdown is supercharging extreme weather across the world, driving more frequent and more deadly disasters, from heatwaves to floods to wildfires. Climate breakdown has increased the wildfire season by about two weeks on average across the globe.
The actor James Woods, who had roles in Casino and Once Upon a Time in America, posted a series of videos of flames near his home in the Palisades.
“Standing in my driveway, getting ready to evacuate,” the Golden Globe winner said in a short video on X, adding firefighting planes were flying over and dropping water. Later he wrote: “It tests your soul, losing everything at once, I must say.”
We were blessed to have LA fire and police depts doing their jobs so well. We are safe and out. There are several elementary schools in our neighborhood and there was an enormous community effort to evacuate the children safely. Can not speak more highly of the LA fire and LAPD. pic.twitter.com/bdsSJmvQel
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 7, 2025
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We were blessed to have LA fire and police depts doing their jobs so well. We are safe and out. There are several elementary schools in our neighborhood and there was an enormous community effort to evacuate the children safely. Can not speak more highly of the LA fire and LAPD. pic.twitter.com/bdsSJmvQel
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) January 7, 2025
The Palisades neighbourhood is filled with hilltop homes along winding roads looking over the sea. Some fleeing residents were forced to abandon their cars in traffic jams on the road and continue on foot.
The actor Steve Guttenberg, who lives in the Palisades and starred in the 1987 comedy Three Men and a Baby, urged people who abandoned their cars to leave their keys behind so they could be moved to make way for fire engines.
In a street clouded with smoke, he told the TV station KTLA: “What’s happening is people take their keys with them, as if they’re in a parking lot. This is not a parking lot. We really need people to move their cars.”
