- A wildfire has broken out in Los Angeles and is raging through the Pacific Palisades neighborhood.
- “Star Wars” actor Mark Hamill was among the 30,000 people in LA evacuated from their homes.
- The average house price in the northern LA area is $4.5 million, per Realtor.com data.
A wildfire in Los Angeles is tearing through the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, home to A-list actors, including Ben Affleck — who bought his $20.5 million mansion there in July.
Other A-listers — Tom Hanks, Reese Witherspoon, Michael Keaton, Adam Sandler, Miles Teller, and Eugene Levy — also live in the neighborhood.
The area is between Santa Monica and Malibu in northern Los Angeles, where the average house price is $4.5 million, according to Realtor.com data.
The fire started on Tuesday in the Pacific Palisades before spreading west toward the Malibu stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway. On Wednesday, the city of Malibu issued a statement on X advising residents to prepare to evacuate.
Among the at least 30,000 LA residents asked to evacuate their homes because of the fire was the “Star Wars” actor Mark Hamill. He said on Instagram that he had left his Malibu home on Tuesday with his wife, Marilou, and their dog, Trixie. He described it as the “most horrific fire since ’93.”
He said: “Evacuated Malibu so last-minute there were small fires on both sides of the road as we approached PCH.”
Levy told The Los Angeles Times on Tuesday that he got stuck while trying to leave the neighborhood. “The smoke looked pretty black and intense over Temescal Canyon,” Levy said. “I couldn’t see any flames but the smoke was very dark.”
Chet Hanks, the son of actors Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, also mentioned the fire on Tuesday.
“The neighborhood I grew up in is burning to the ground rn. Pray for the Palisades,” he wrote in an Instagram Stories post.
On Wednesday morning, the “Halloween” star Jamie Lee Curtis said on Instagram that she was safe but her home in West LA might not be.
She wrote: “My community and possibly my home is on fire. My family is safe. Many of my friends will lose their homes. Many other communities as well. There are so many conflicting reports. With all the technology there seems to be very little information. Please post facts! It will help those wondering!”
The Oscar-nominated actor James Woods said on X that he and his family safely evacuated from the Palisades but didn’t know whether his home “is still standing.”
On Tuesday, TMZ reported that Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag, two stars of “The Hills,” lost their home in the fire after being evacuated.
Actor Kate Beckinsale wrote in an Instagram post on Wednesday that “the whole of the Palisades being destroyed is unthinkably horrific.”
“My daughter and I lived there for most of her childhood and most of her childhood is gone,” she wrote.
Beckinsale shared several other posts, including one thanking local firefighters and another sharing information about assembling an emergency bag.
The Palisades Charter High School also burned down, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The campus was used for films including “Carrie,” “Freaky Friday,” “Project X,” and MTV’s “Teen Wolf” TV series.
The premieres for “Wolf Man” and “Unstoppable,” scheduled for Tuesday, were canceled.
In 2023, a study from the University of California, Irvine, found that California’s wildfires had worsened each year over the past two decades.
The fire that started on Tuesday quickly spread because of the Santa Ana winds, which created up to 80 mph gusts. The drought in Southern California also exacerbated the situation, creating dangerously dry conditions.
In 2018, Kim Kardashian and her ex-husband Kanye West were criticized by fans for hiring private firefighters to protect their $60 million home in the Hidden Hills when the Woolsey Fire burned almost 100,000 acres of land.
