Malibu Evacuated as Fire Jumps 101 Freeway Near Los Angeles
Entire City of Malibu Evacuated as Fire Jumps Freeway Near Los Angeles
(Bloomberg) -- The wind-swept fires burning near Los Angeles threatens a region already reeling from a mass shooting that left 12 dead.
The blazes in Ventura and Los Angeles counties have forced more than 80,000 evacuations, including in Malibu, an enclave for the rich and famous. They’ve burned 14,000 acres and closed the 101 freeway, a major artery. And they’ve come two days after a Marine Corps veteran stormed a bar in Thousand Oaks and sprayed patrons with bullets before turning the .45-caliber handgun on himself.
“It’s been a difficult time here,” Peter Foy, chairman of Ventura County’s Board of Supervisors, said Friday at a morning news briefing.
A separate fire in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park burned 30 acres, spurring officials to begin evacuating animals from the city’s zoo.
Malibu, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) west of downtown Los Angeles, has been home to Hollywood stars and billionaires including Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman, Larry Ellison and Eli Broad. Oracle Corp.’s Ellison, among the world’s richest people, reportedly owns multiple properties in the area.
“In Malibu, we’ve had a number of fires over the last 10 or 15 years," said Stephen Shapiro, a real estate agent who has a home in the area. “Some have been devastating, and some have just been scary. There’s always fear of fire in Malibu.”
--With assistance from Noah Buhayar and Tom Metcalf.
To contact the reporters on this story: Christopher Palmeri in Los Angeles at cpalmeri1@bloomberg.net;Esmé E. Deprez in Santa Barbara at edeprez@bloomberg.net;John Gittelsohn in Los Angeles at johngitt@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net, Joe Ryan, Rob Golum
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