Los Angeles was hit by a fire that broke out at around 10.30am on Tuesday in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles, between Malibu and Santa Monica, but throughout the day other fires spread across the city, affecting Altadena, Pasadena, Sylmar and Topanga. The cause is not yet known, but the damage is beginning to be calculated: more than 30,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, homes and office buildings have been destroyed, and an estimated 13,000 structures are threatened.

Among them are important architectural monuments. The fire is coming dangerously close to the Eames House, or Case Study House No. 8, the icon of modern architecture designed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1949. The Eames Foundation said: “The Foundation's team worked quickly to remove a small number of objects from the house before they had to evacuate the building,” while the situation is being monitored by local authorities.

The Getty Villa is also at risk, but Katherine E. Fleming, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, assured that for the time being “Museum galleries and library archives were sealed off from smoke by state-of-the-art air-handling systems.”
Other important buildings are threatened by fire, in a situation that residents have described as “like Armageddon”, according to the Los Angeles Times.