Thousands flee as wildfires burn out of control and destroy homes across Los Angeles area

Multiple massive wildfires tore across the Los Angeles area with devastating force early on Wednesday as residents made a desperate escape from burning homes through flames, ferocious winds and towering clouds of smoke.

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Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said two people were killed and many others hurt in the fires, which have destroyed more than 1,000 structures.

At least three separate blazes were burning in the metropolitan area, from the Pacific Coast inland to Pasadena, home of the famed Rose Parade. With thousands of firefighters already attacking the flames, the Los Angeles Fire Department put out a plea for off-duty firefighters to help.

Weather conditions were too windy for firefighting aircraft to fly, further hampering the fight.

Images of the devastation that emerged overnight showed luxurious homes that had collapsed in a whirlwind of flaming embers. The tops of palm trees whipped against a glowing red sky.

Tens of thousands of residents were ordered to evacuate as the fires marched towards highly populated and affluent neighbourhoods home to California's rich and famous. Hollywood stars, including Mark Hamill, Mandy Moore and James Woods, were among those forced to flee.

Flames that broke out on Tuesday evening near a nature preserve in the foothills northeast of LA spread so rapidly that staff at a senior living centre had to push dozens of residents in wheelchairs and hospital beds down the street to a parking lot.

Residents — one as old as 102 — waited in their bedclothes as embers fell around them until ambulances, buses and construction vans arrived to take them to safety.

Another blaze that started hours earlier ripped through the city's Pacific Palisades neighbourhood, a hillside area along the coast dotted with celebrity homes and memorialised by the Beach Boys in their 1960s hit ‘Surfin' USA’. In the race to get to safety, roadways became impassable when scores of people abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot, some toting suitcases.

Sheriece Wallace was unaware there was a fire burning around her until her sister called at the moment a helicopter made a water drop over her house.

“I was like, It's raining,'” Wallace said. “She's like, No, it's not raining. Your neighbourhood is on fire. You need to get out.'”

“As soon as I opened my door, it was like right there,” she said. “The first thing I did was looked at the trees to see where the wind was blowing. Because it hit me. It blew me back.” She was able to leave.

A traffic jam on Palisades Drive prevented emergency vehicles from getting through, and a bulldozer was brought in to push the abandoned cars to the side and create a path.