Malibu Blaze Brings Harrowing Scene for Students, Evacuees
(Bloomberg) -- At about 2 a.m., students huddled in Pepperdine University’s library and watched through the window as wind-whipped flames blazed over a nearby hill. The Malibu sky glowed red. Smoke filtered into the building.
“It was just across the street and it looked like it was getting closer,” Rachel Flynn, a senior at the Southern California school, said in a phone interview. “We were wondering, where’s the fire department?”
The Franklin Fire broke out in Malibu suddenly late Monday evening, leading to an overnight scramble among thousands of residents to evacuate or find a safe location amid smoke-filled skies. At Pepperdine’s campus, perched above the Pacific Ocean about 35 miles (56 kilometers) west of downtown Los Angeles, more than 800 students were told to shelter in place.
Many were ordered to the library, where students called their parents and stayed up through the night watching the flames. A few were crying, said Flynn, a 26-year-old journalism and political science major from Savage, Minnesota.
Even for Malibu, a wealthy enclave with a long history of blazes, the fire was notable for its sudden onset and rapid growth. After starting just before 11 p.m., it exploded overnight to more than 2,800 acres as of late Tuesday afternoon. At Pepperdine, firefighters were able to stop the flames before they reached school buildings.
The scene as the fire set in was “kind of crazy” as power shut off and many students got in cars to flee, said Jack Putrino, a junior majoring in political science. He left campus with a friend, describing ash falling on their vehicle and flames lighting up the sky.
“It’s so pretty with the ocean, but then things like this happen,” Putrino said.
Late Tuesday afternoon, Pepperdine ordered students to shelter in place at the library or a campus center building through the night again. Those buildings are operating on generator power while electricity remains out across the campus.
“Student Affairs staff will be in both locations throughout the night, and the university will provide food, power, water, and communications,” the school said in a post on X.
Pounding Doors
At the hilltop Serra Retreat Center, cancer patients and survivors had gathered for a four-day program of yoga, meditation, and art therapy. Nancy Davidson, executive director of the Living Beauty Cancer Foundation, said staff first noticed smoke over a hillside on Monday just before 11 p.m. Within an hour, the fire had nearly reached the property.
“Our staff went down the hall, pounding on doors, saying, ‘We need to leave, there’s a fire,’” Davidson said. “The flames had jumped the hillside and were right up against the retreat.”
The women evacuated calmly by car, taking only essentials like medications and identification as firetrucks started rolling in, Davidson said. By sunrise, flames were reported on the retreat property. The city said that some buildings had been damaged.
“The women are used to handling a lot of crisis in their lives, and they remained pretty calm,” she said. “We’re praying Serra is spared. It’s an important place for healing.”
The foundation has hosted retreats at the center since 2005. Davidson said this is the first time they’ve been forced to evacuate.
The 98-year-old actor Dick Van Dyke was among the evacuees in the area, he said on a Facebook post. Among other celebrities, The Office star Rainn Wilson said during a radio interview Tuesday that his Malibu home was damaged while he was appearing on stage in a production of Waiting for Godot at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.
So far, Malibu’s most expensive homes lining the beach have been spared by the fire. Property owners include celebrities such as Beyonce and Jay-Z, who paid $190 million for their oceanfront estate. Venture capital investor Marc Andreessen bought a nearby home for $177 million in 2021. Billionaire philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs paid $94 million this year for a seafront estate next to a neighboring property she owns that was damaged in a 2018 fire.
Malibu city officials said on Tuesday afternoon that homes and other structures have been affected — including the famed Malibu Pier — but they didn’t have details on the full scale of the damage. No deaths or injuries have been reported, they said.
On Tuesday morning, Flynn ventured outside onto Pepperdine’s campus around sunrise. She posted videos and photos on the school’s news site and her personal Instagram page.
“It was apocalyptic with all the smoke, nobody around, little fires here and there,” she said. “Being from Minnesota, I’m not used to fires like this.”
--With assistance from Denise Lu.
(Updates with Pepperdine shelter in place order for Tuesday in eighth paragraph. A prior version corrected the spelling of Marc Andreessen.)
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