Wind-whipped flames chased thousands of residents from wealthy Los Angeles neighborhoods and threatened the city’s famed Getty Center museum on Monday, Reuters has reported.
Los Angeles Lakers basketball great LeBron James, “Terminator” star and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, actor Clark Gregg and “Sons of Anarchy” creator Kurt Sutter all said on Twitter they had been forced to flee their homes.
The new conflagration broke out at around 1:30 a.m. PDT near the Getty Center on the west side of Los Angeles, hundreds of miles (km) from where crews were fighting the state’s biggest and most destructive fire, the Kincade, north of San Francisco.
As of midday the Kincade Fire, which erupted on Wednesday night, had blackened 66,000 acres (26,709 hectares) across parts of Sonoma County’s picturesque wine country, destroying 96 homes and other structures.
More than 4,100 firefighters working to put out the blaze had built containment lines around only 5% of the flames following a wind-fanned flare-up on Sunday.