Hollywood Flees As Wildfires Sweep Coast of California

Brush fires fueled by fierce desert winds continued to sweep through southern California yesterday destroying homes and forcing evacuations.

Malibu residents sped away in Mercedes from their homes in the upmarket enclave, while one person, thought to be a migrant attempting to cross the border from Mexico into the US, was reported to have died yesterday in the San Diego area.

Air quality plummeted as winds gusting up to 90mph deposited ash and soot across the area. Low brown clouds darkened the skies on what would have been a clear, sunny day.

Power lines brought down by the high winds were thought to be responsible for sparking the fires at the weekend, although fire officials said that some of the fiercest fires, in Orange county south of Los Angeles, had been started by arsonists.

Local TV stations turned their schedules over to cover the fires, with helicopter shots showing lines of fire snaking across the canyons that reach inland from the Pacific Ocean.

The fires stretched from Tecate on the Mexican border to Santa Barbara county, almost 200 miles to the north. Some 40,000 acres had been burned by yesterday morning, forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents and the closure of schools in several areas.

In Malibu, where 1,500 residents were evacuated, a church was destroyed by fire as was a mock turreted "Scottish" castle, an ornate local landmark which was on the market for $17m (£8.4m).

The owner, Lilly Lawrence, daughter of a former Iranian oil minister, took memento's from the property, including Elvis Presley's army fatigues.

"My parents taught me not to allow my possessions to possess me," she told local TV. "So, that's the story. The house is a house."

News pictures showed the houses of some of the rich and famous of Malibu, including film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, dousing their homes with fire retardant. The fierce winds, which had calmed overnight on Sunday but picked up yesterday morning, carried burning embers across the Pacific Coast Highway and toward the exclusive beach front properties.

"This fire is zero per cent contained, which means we're at the mercy of the wind," Malibu mayor Pamela Conley Ulich told reporters on Sunday night.

Firefighters yesterday estimated that the fire was 10% contained, although the situation was changing by the hour.

The brush fires are an annual event in southern California, fueled by the Santa Ana desert winds. The Santa Ana's carry warm air from the desert to the coast, drying out the land as they pass and spreading the fires. Despite some recent rains, southern California, like all of the western US, is experiencing a prolonged and severe drought.

"This was a conflagration that we knew was coming at some point," Los Angeles county supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky told reporters. "We were cruising for a bruising."

The high winds were expected to continue at least until this afternoon, and authorities said it could take several more days to control the fires.