LOS ANGELES — A ferocious wildfire was spreading rapidly early Tuesday in Malibu, spurring evacuations along the coast while nearby Pepperdine University issued a campus-wide shelter-in-place order and firefighters struggled to battle the flames.

The eastern half of Malibu was ordered evacuated, and the rest of the city was under an evacuation warning. Some 6,000 residents live in the area ordered evacuated, firefighters said — most of the city’s population of about 11,000. About 2,000 structures are affected by the mandatory evacuation order.

Dubbed the Franklin fire, the blaze was moving at a fierce pace, fanned by strong Santa Ana winds, and had exploded to more than 2,200 acres as of 7 a.m. with no containment, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Flames were reported on both sides of Pacific Coast Highway, with the fire jumping the road in at least two locations — the area around Malibu Pier and around Malibu Road and Webb Way, just next to Malibu Colony Plaza, where a Ralphs supermarket is located, according to the city.

Structures were “impacted” along Malibu Knolls Road, where there are a few homes and a church, and in the area of Sweetwater Canyon Drive, where there are more than a dozen homes, the city said.

Residents described having just minutes to flee as they saw a storm of embers rain down, with hillsides and trees bursting into flames, and having precious little time to decide what to take with them.

“I think I’m in shock right now,” said Malibu City Councilmember Bruce Silverstein, who evacuated shortly after he smelled smoke while at home in the hills above City Hall around 11 p.m.

His wife got an alert about the fire and by 11:20 p.m. the flames licked the hillside while the sky grew ever redder. The couple packed their bags and drove on Pacific Coast Highway toward Santa Monica to check into a hotel.

The lawn and trees around the home were “just burning wild,” said Silverstein, who watched as fire gradually approached his property through the Internet-connected Ring cameras stationed around his house.

“My house has come very close to catching fire multiple times in the last couple of hours,” said Silverstein. The bushes and fence at the top of the property burned, a sight rendered in video, but the fire department showed up and doused the area.

“We thought it was completely under control,” Silverstein said. “Then a bunch of embers came flying into the yard.”

Jonathan Torres, spokesman for L.A. County Fire Department, told The Times that hundreds of firefighters responded to the fire and had been hampered by winds of 50 to 80 miles an hour.

Firefighting helicopters were picking up water using the lakes at Pepperdine’s Alumni Park to drop on the flames, the campus said.

The fire was reported around 10:52 p.m. along Malibu Canyon Road and north of Francisco Ranch Road in the hills north of Pepperdine.

At around the time the fire ignited, there were gusts of up to 65 mph reported. By around 3:30 a.m., the winds were weakening slightly, with gusts in the 40-mph range, said National Weather Service meteorologist Todd Hall. But patterns seen in past Santa Ana wind events “suggest winds should ramp up around daybreak,” Hall said. Meanwhile, relative humidity was quite dry, as low as 5%.

The cause of the fire was unclear.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said early Tuesday that the governor had been briefed on the blaze and the state had secured a Fire Management Assistance Grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help with fire suppression costs.

Around 1 a.m. Tuesday, the fire had moved into the Serra Retreat area and was threatening structures. The community is less than a mile northwest of Malibu Pier. There are private homes in addition to a Catholic retreat and conference center noted for its views.

Fire crews from Orange and Ventura counties and the city of L.A. joined L.A. County firefighters, providing on-the-ground and aerial response as they sought to get a handle on the conflagration.

A six-mile stretch of Pacific Coast Highway was ordered closed east of Corral Canyon Road and west of Las Flores Canyon Road, the city of Malibu said. Las Virgenes Road, which continues as Malibu Canyon Road on the way to the coast, is closed south of Mulholland Highway all the way to Pacific Coast Highway, a six-mile stretch of road, the city added.

An evacuation warning along Pacific Coast Highway extended as far east as the edge of Los Angeles city limits, on the border of the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, and as far west as Zuma Beach.

A temporary evacuation center was set up at Palisades Recreation Center at 851 Alma Real Drive in Pacific Palisades. Large animals can be taken to Pierce College at 6201 Winnetka Ave. in Woodland Hills.

Pepperdine University was in the heart of the evacuation area, but the university directed students and others on campus to remain there and abide by the university’s emergency protocol. “All community members on the Malibu campus are directed to shelter in place in the Tyler Campus Center or Payson Library,” Pepperdine shared on X at 1:09 a.m. Tuesday.

At around 3:30 a.m., the school said, “[T]he worst of the fire has pushed past Pepperdine.” Spot fires continued to burn on campus, the university noted, but none were threatening buildings or lives. People on campus were being asked to stay at least until sunrise.

Pepperdine University has a well-documented “shelter-in-place” protocol when wildfires threaten Malibu, given how difficult it can be to evacuate the campus quickly on narrow roads during a crisis.

The university says the campus’ buildings are built with fire-resistant materials, and brush is cleared at least 200 feet away from structures. The school took some criticism for its shelter-in-place plan after the campus used it during the Woolsey fire in 2018, with some students nervous about remaining on campus.

The university, however, has said Pepperdine’s practice of having students shelter in place on campus during wildfires has lasted for decades and is supported by the county fire department. Besides the Woolsey fire, it has been utilized for all fires since 1993, including the Old Topanga in 1993, Calabasas in 1996 and the Canyon and Corral fires in 2007.

Classes and final exams were canceled Tuesday at Pepperdine University’s Malibu campus. Public schools in Malibu were also closed on Tuesday because of the fire.

Pepperdine student Nick Gerding told KTLA-TV on Tuesday morning that hundreds of students sheltered in place in the campus library overnight as the flames moved closer.

“Once we got news it jumped Malibu Canyon Road, you could really see it come over the hill,” Gerding said. “It was so close that we got the warning to stay away from the windows because the trees that were a good 20 feet ahead of it were on fire.”

It wasn’t clear if the burning trees were a part of a defensive fire set by crews, he said. Meanwhile, some 200 to 300 students lined up to grab breakfast while another few hundred slept, Gerding said.

Even though Pepperdine’s process for the fire made him feel relatively safe, the experience still frightened Gerding, he told KTLA.

“My brother attended Pepperdine here about five years ago and they had a campus fire … and did the same process,” he said. “I was familiar but it was a panic I’d never experienced before, so I wasn’t ready for that.”

Malibu resident Alp Toygar said he had taken a drive through Malibu in the early morning hours for a closer look at the conflagration.

“Flames are everywhere,” he told The Times around 3:30 a.m. “People are running away in vehicles from Malibu both directions on the coastal highway. I just passed through the blazes ... on the highway. No traffic lights. Police cars and fire trucks are everywhere.”

The National Weather Service has issued a “Particularly Dangerous Situation” red flag warning for wide portions of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, which will last through Tuesday afternoon. Gusts of up to 80 mph are possible, and relative humidity is forecast to be alarmingly low, while vegetation is extremely dry.

The weather service said that within the Franklin fire area, strong and damaging winds from the north and northeast were expected to peak around sunrise Tuesday, and last through late Tuesday morning.

Relative humidity levels were as low as 9% just before midnight. It could fall even lower — forecasters said that relative humidity could fall to as low as 1% in Oxnard and Thousand Oaks in nearby Ventura County.

More than 3,500 customers were reportedly without power early Tuesday due to the fire, according to Southern California Edison’s online outage map. The power is largely out in Malibu due to a public-safety power shutoff.

This is the second time this fire season that the weather service has issued a Particularly Dangerous Situation red flag warning. The last time the warning was issued was on Nov. 5, and a day later, the Mountain fire ignited in Ventura County and, whipped by powerful winds, razed more than 240 buildings. It became the third most destructive wildfire in Southern California since 2013.

The dry, strong Santa Ana winds are being driven by a system of high pressure building in the Great Basin, which is sending air hurtling through canyons and mountain passes to the coast, where there is low pressure.

The region has also been quite dry. Since the water year began on Oct. 1, just 0.14 inches of rain has fallen in downtown Los Angeles. That’s sharply below the average for this time of the season, when 1.87 inches on average has already fallen. And there’s not too much hope for significant rain for the next week in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

Malibu and neighboring communities in Thousand Oaks, Oak Park and Agoura Hills saw tremendous destruction in the 2018 Woolsey fire, which destroyed more than 1,600 structures and burned about 97,000 acres.

-------

Times staff writers Brittny Mejia and Hannah Fry contributed to this report.

©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.