Wildfires displace thousands and ravage greater Los Angeles
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We knew it could happen. Here was the forecast Tuesday morning on NBC4 Los Angeles. This is a dangerous Santa Ana windstorm. The National Weather Service dubbing this as a particularly dangerous situation. It's the third time this season that they've used that strong wording. The past two times we've had big fires break out, so we have to be smart and we have to be safe.

And within hours, it did happen. At 10.30 this morning, a brush fire was reported at 1190 North Piedra. That's Kristen Crowley, fire chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department. Extremely dry conditions coupled with those high winds meant that brush fire exploded. And by the time of Crowley's afternoon press conference, the fire had burned more than 1,200 acres —

Tens of thousands of people were ordered to evacuate in communities between the Santa Monica Mountains and the ocean north and west of downtown L.A. Here's Los Angeles Council Member Tracy Park. Obviously, the scope and scale of today's fire here in the Palisades has been terrifying. We are so incredibly grateful for the swift response.

The air was choked with smoke. The sky glowed a hazy orange. Apocalyptic scenes played out on TV, like a bulldozer scraping cars off one road to make room for emergency vehicles. Panicked drivers had abandoned the cars as they evacuated. It wasn't long before another fire broke out near Pasadena, north of downtown L.A.

By Wednesday morning, four fires were burning and resources were severely strained. This is not a normal red flag alert. That's L.A. County Fire Chief Anthony Maroney at a press conference this morning. There are not enough firefighters in L.A. County to address four separate fires of this magnitude. Another official reported that fire hydrants in the Pacific Palisades went dry overnight.

And Margaret Stewart, a public information officer with the city's fire department, told NPR that the high winds make the situation especially dangerous for firefighters. They've got debris flying. Your hose lines are ineffective because the wind just blows the water away, as well as flying embers, the smoke, the visibility. It's

extremely difficult job. She urged residents to be ready if they were under evacuation warnings. They need to have the go bag in the vehicle, the vehicles in the driveway facing out. They need to have a plan in place and if they can evacuate early, go now. Consider this. Tens of thousands have already been forced from their homes by the LA wildfires. Coming up, we'll hear from one of them. Music

From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro.

It's Consider This from NPR. One of the tens of thousands of evacuees in the Los Angeles area is Adria Clokey. She lives in Pacific Palisades, a residential neighborhood on the coast where thousands of acres have already burned in the wildfires. She works for member station KCRW, and she sent us this voice memo describing her evacuation experience on Tuesday. I was working away somewhere around 1030 in the morning when the fire picked up.

Um, I've lost two homes to fire in my lifetime, 1993 and 2008. So I'm deeply familiar with the process and also the anxiety around it. So as soon as there was a sign of a fire in my area, I started to, um, go into action a little bit sooner than the rest of my neighbors went and put some of the most precious items directly into my car. And, uh,

We were watching from the windows on all sides of my building and just watched it get closer and closer. The sky was full of ash almost immediately. The smoke plume was enormous overhead and it just became unbearable. The inside of my apartment, this was maybe around noon, was completely dark. The sky outside was impenetrable brown wall of smoke and

I couldn't focus on even selecting things to take at that point. I had wrapped up items like irreplaceable photos, photos that aren't digitized. And I also packed essentially what I would need for three days of my own life. Toiletry kit, clothes. I knew to pack shoes that you can walk through rubble with. I knew to pack a respirator.

packing things that I would need if I was able to return, but if my home was destroyed. It's really hard to think of what to take in the moment. Make a list. Be prepared for this in the future. Another thing that I know from my experience is to walk slowly around your home, videoing every room.

And just narrate all your possessions. Open every cabinet door. Look inside drawers. Talk about what you own. Talk about where it came from. And just get everything you can on camera. It will make your insurance process a lot easier if you have to go down that road. With my family, we've done it twice. Doing that is obviously a harrowing experience because it clashes against your instinct to have hope that you'll be returning to your home.

I'm safe. I evacuated, got into my car. As I left my condo community, there were people walking by me with their possessions in their arms, people who were walking from up the hill where they clearly had to abandon their cars, people with their pets in their arms. And the police response was incredible. So grateful for their directing traffic because people were trying to jet out of the line of cars and

uh, to escape faster. And, um, the police presence that were on foot in respirators kept them in line because it could have been really dangerous, but, uh, I was able to crawl two to five miles an hour for 15 minutes or so to get out of the immediate plume of smoke that we were totally engulfed in at that time. Went South on PCH from sunset. Once I got to Temescal, the, um,

traffic loosened up a bit. And my dear friend had taken a scooter from his place in Santa Monica to meet me at PCH. And I pulled over in the Jonathan Club driveway so that he could get in the car and take over the driving. And I got into the backseat and just completely fell apart at that point. And he drove us safely to my friend's condo in Marina Del Rey. And that's where I am with my cat now.

We slept last night and we have our lives and just so grateful for that and for the support of my friends and my colleagues. And I would just say that if you have the ability to pack up and get out of wherever you are early to do it, just to get away and relax.

If the fire maps are accurate, my building may have been spared. Another building in my condo community was definitely on fire where a dear, dear friend lives as well. We're not sure about his home. Smoke damage can do quite a lot. Even if the structure is still standing, I've seen that in my own experience. So I'm just grateful for my life. It's so true when they say nothing in your home is worth going back for. If you need to get out, just get out.

That's Adria Clokey, who evacuated her home Tuesday ahead of the wildfires. She's now staying with a friend who lives further down the coast in Marina del Rey. This episode was produced by Connor Donovan, Mark Rivers, and Chimactomy, with audio engineering by Tiffany Castro. It was edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.