(Bloomberg) -- More than 1,500 firefighters are racing to control a fast-moving Southern California wildfire that’s threatening the wealthy town of Malibu, forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents.
“The Franklin fire has now burned 3,049 acres and remains at 0% containment,” the Malibu city government said in an update early Wednesday. At least seven structures have been destroyed and eight damaged, it added, citing preliminary estimates.
The cause of the blaze is still under investigation, according to state officials. It has grown rapidly since beginning late Monday, whipped by strong, dry Santa Ana winds.
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The fire highlights the threat posed by climate change, with hotter and drier conditions increasingly leaving regions parched and vulnerable to sparks that can trigger a blaze. The National Weather Service has warned of “extremely critical” fire weather in Southern California through Wednesday.
There were no reports of fatalities or injuries from the Franklin fire, according to the latest update Tuesday from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. However, parts of Malibu were under an evacuation order due to an “immediate threat to life,” the agency said.
“The entire fire area remains under threat,” Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said at a briefing Tuesday. Strong winds and low humidity “will continue to challenge firefighters on the line and in the air,” he said, adding that the county fire department and sheriff’s office will join forces with arson investigators to find out how the fire started.
Some 20,000 residents have been affected by the blaze, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Captain Jennifer Seeto. A stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway, spanning from roughly Tuna Canyon Road to Kanan Dume Road, has been closed to all traffic except those evacuating the area.
All Malibu public schools will be shut Wednesday and Thursday, and Malibu City Hall has been evacuated, with officials operating out of the nearby city of Calabasas. At one point on Tuesday, the fire tripled in size in just one hour.
The city is one of the state’s wealthiest, with miles of pristine beaches and homes selling for a median price of more than $4 million. Actor Dick Van Dyke posted on social media Tuesday that he, his wife and their animals had evacuated their home. The evacuation orders cover an area not far from the site of the Getty fire, a 2019 blaze that burned 745 acres.
Malibu’s primary link to the rest of the Los Angeles region is the Pacific Coast Highway. With a segment of that road currently shut due to the fire, the exclusive community is mostly cut off.
Power Outages
Utilities in Southern California have shut off power across swaths of the region to reduce the risk of electrical equipment sparking additional blazes. San Diego Gas & Electric Co. has cut power to more than 46,000 homes and business, and warned that as many as 70,000 more customers may lose service later.
Southern California Edison has cut power to more than 38,000 homes and businesses, including large areas around Malibu. The company warns that as many as 23,400 customers are also at risk of losing electricity, mainly in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernadino counties.
California Governor Gavin Newsom secured federal emergency assistance to support the response to the fire, his office said in a statement.
The situation will remain dire through Wednesday, but conditions will begin to improve as high pressure across Utah and Nevada starts to weaken. The winds are driven by a pressure gradient that has set up over the Great Basin and California’s Pacific coast.
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Climate Effect
The wildfire threat across California and other parts of the US West is intensifying as the planet warms. At this time of year, Southern California is also frequently battered by strong Santa Ana winds that come in from the east and can turn small fires into raging infernos.
A separate blaze, known as the Rogers fire, started northeast of Los Angeles on Tuesday evening local time. The cause of that fire, which covers a 10-acre area, was still under investigation.
So far this year, 7,909 fires have burned more than 1 million acres in the state and killed one person, according to Cal Fire. California has had back-to-back plentiful rainy seasons that have left its landscape covered with grasses and shrubs that dried out during this past summer’s heat.
Malibu’s neighbor city Santa Monica has received less than 1/10th of an inch of rain since July compared with a normal season-to-date of 1.5 inches through November, according to the Los Angeles Almanac.
Aircraft were expected to fly over the Franklin blaze through the night, so that firefighters can take advantage of lower temperatures and higher humidity to control its spread, said Marrone, the fire chief.
“We seem to get one significant wildfire every time we have a strong Santa Ana event,” he said. “It’s undeniable, from my perspective, that global warming is causing more challenges for us.”
--With assistance from Denise Lu, Mark Chediak, Brian K. Sullivan and Yasufumi Saito.
(Updates throughout.)
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