What We Know About the Wildfires Raging in Southern California

The fast-moving fires are intensifying because of fierce winds, the strongest in Southern California in more than a decade.

Fast-moving fires on Tuesday forced more than 30,000 people in the Los Angeles area to evacuate their homes, as the skies turned red and fierce winds knocked down trees and power lines.

The wind storm was expected to bring even more destruction overnight and into Wednesday. The two large fires — one in the Pacific Palisades and the other in the mountains above Pasadena — were not at all contained as of Tuesday night and the winds were forecast to reach as high as 100 miles per hour, the strongest Southern California has experienced in more than a decade.

Here’s the latest on the blazes:

The fires were burning on opposite sides of the Los Angeles area. To the west, the Palisades fire had burned more than 2,900 acres in Pacific Palisades, a coastal neighborhood west of downtown Los Angeles. The fire had spread quickly throughout Tuesday. In the afternoon, the fire more than doubled in size in a matter of about three hours.

To the east, another fire began in the evening in Eaton Canyon, in the San Gabriel Mountains above Altadena. The blaze, which was being called the Eaton fire, had consumed 1,000 acres by that night.

And to the north, the Hurst fire quickly grew to 100 acres and forced evacuations in Sylmar, a suburb in the San Fernando Valley northwest of downtown Los Angeles.