Wildfire triggers evacuation order for Malibu

UPDATE: 11/9/2018 8:46 a.m. The city of Malibu has reduced the scope a mandatory evacuation order for the beachside community as a wildfire approaches.

Malibu officials initially said the order issued early Friday applied to the entire city but have now defined an area that is approximately the western two-thirds of the community.

The fire erupted Thursday northwest of Los Angeles and has been swept southward toward the ocean by strong Santa Ana winds.

UPDATE: 11/9/2018 7:25 a.m. A raging Southern California wildfire has triggered a mandatory evacuation order for the entire beachside city of Malibu.

The fire broke out Thursday northwest of Los Angeles and roared southward, jumping the U.S. 101 freeway early Friday and sweeping into the Santa Monica Mountains.

Malibu has about 13,000 residents and lies along 21 miles (34 kilometers) of coast at the southern foot of the mountain range.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department tweets that the fire is headed to the ocean, punctuating the message with the declaration: “Imminent threat!”

___

7 a.m.

Wildfires raging west of Los Angeles have forced school closures.

Pepperdine University has canceled classes Friday at its Malibu and Calabasas campuses. The Calabasas campus is also evacuated.

Malibu public schools are also closed.

To the west in Ventura County, Moorpark College is closed due to the impacts of fire and Wednesday night’s deadly mass shooting in nearby Thousand Oaks.

California Lutheran University had already canceled Friday classes due to the shooting. Cal Lutheran says its Thousand Oaks campus is not under evacuation orders but residential students have been put on standby.

The Thousand Oaks-area Conejo Valley Unified School District also has closed all its schools.

PREVIOUS STORY:

Evacuations are being ordered as strong Santa Ana winds fan a Southern California wildfire a few miles from the site of the mass shooting in the city of Thousand Oaks.

The Hill fire erupted Thursday afternoon and the Ventura County Fire Department quickly ordered evacuations of the community of Camarillo Springs and a trailer park as the fire jumped U.S. 101.

The fire is burning between 8-10,000 acres.

The major artery has been shut down and cars and trucks are trying to turn around to get away from the flames.

More than 160 firefighters have been dispatched and eight air tankers have been ordered.

The gusty, withering Santa Ana winds blow from the interior toward the coast and have been involved in the spread of many of the region’s worst wildfires.

A large fire also is burning several hours north of San Francisco.

{“url”:”https://twitter.com/VCFD_PIO/status/1060675906132500482″,”author_name”:”VCFD PIO”,”author_url”:”https://twitter.com/VCFD_PIO”,”html”:”&#lt;blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&#gt;&#lt;p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”&#gt;&#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/HillInc?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;#HillInc&#lt;/a&#gt; Fire is 8- 10,000 acres with mandatory evacs in Cam Springs and a hard closure of US 101 North and South. &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/VCFD?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;@VCFD&#lt;/a&#gt; &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/VCAirUnit?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;@VCAirUnit&#lt;/a&#gt; &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/VCSOVentura?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;@VCSOVentura&#lt;/a&#gt; &#lt;a href=”https://t.co/avF02QULNJ”&#gt;pic.twitter.com/avF02QULNJ&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/p&#gt;– VCFD PIO (@VCFD_PIO) &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/VCFD_PIO/status/1060675906132500482?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;November 8, 2018&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/blockquote&#gt;n&#lt;script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″&#gt;&#lt;/script&#gt;n”,”width”:550,”height”:null,”type”:”rich”,”cache_age”:”3153600000″,”provider_name”:”Twitter”,”provider_url”:”https://twitter.com”,”version”:”1.0″}