A fire was burning Thursday morning in Bel-Air on the eastern side of the 405 Freeway in the Sepulveda Pass.
The fire was burning uphill, toward Sepulveda Fire Road. Winds in the area were around 8 to 15 mph, with gusts of up to 25 mph, said Todd Hall, meteorologist with the National Weather Service. The air is very dry, with relative humidity from 3% to 8%.
Multiple fire engines were on the scene. Firefighting helicopters were dropping water and filling up at the nearby Stone Canyon Reservoir.
Initial word of the paper appeared shortly after 11 p.m. Wednesday, and seemed to grow fast. By 12:30 a.m. Thursday, the fire’s growth seemed to have slowed.
Traffic could be seen in local TV footage crawling along the 405 as flames burned on the hillside.
An evacuation warning was issued for a part of Bel-Air and Brentwood, including Mount Saint Mary’s University, as well as homes along Casiano Road, Moraga Drive and Chalon Road.
The Hotel Angeleno was evacuating 121 people due to the nearby fire, which was just across the 405 Freeway from the hotel, according to a front desk worker.
The Getty Center, which is south of the fire, has “activated fire protection measures and will continue to provide updates as they become available,” spokesperson for the J. Paul Getty Trust Alexandria Sivak said in an email early Thursday morning. The Getty Center sits across the 405 from the new fire.
In the evacuation warning area sits Moraga Bel Air Vineyards, owned by Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch reportedly paid $30 million for the 16-acre site in 2013. According to the winery’s website, Moraga was the first commercial winery to be bonded in the city of Los Angeles after Prohibition ended in 1933.
Murdoch is known to spend time at Moraga Bel Air Vineyards. He married his fifth wife, Elena Zhukova, a Russian molecular biologist at Moraga last June.
This is not the property’s first brush with wildfires. Parts of the vineyard were scorched during the Skirball fire in 2017.
The Sepulveda fire comes amid a busy day for firefighters.
A huge fire exploded Wednesday north of Castaic, charring more than 10,000 acres and forcing thousands to flee their homes amid a month of extreme fire conditions that have plagued Southern California.
The Hughes fire started off Lake Hughes Road just before 11 a.m. and quickly prompted evacuation orders in and around Castaic Lake, which by afternoon extended toward Ventura County to the west and near Sandberg to the north. More than 31,000 people were ordered to evacuate, and warnings were issued to 23,000 others.