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Multiple Catholic parishes and schools in the Los Angeles area were closed and evacuated due to a series of wind-driven fires on Tuesday.
Corpus Christi Church in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of LA is located in the evacuation area of the “Palisades Fire,” which had burned over 3,000 acres and prompted more than 30,000 evacuations by the evening of Jan. 7.
Images of the fire shared with Angelus showed homes burning at Sunset Blvd. & Fiske Street late Tuesday night, just a block away from Corpus Christi.
The fire was first reported at 10:30 a.m. local time on Tuesday; by 11:30 a.m., Corpus Christi students had been sent home for the day and the parish property closed, a parish official told Angelus.
“They are very experienced at doing this from other fires, so the principal and the community are handling it very well,” an official with the Archdiocese of LA’s Department of Catholic Schools told Angelus.
The other major fire caused by the extremely dry gusts known locally as the “Santa Ana winds” in the LA area Tuesday night, the “Eaton Fire,” prompted mandatory evacuations in an area of Altadena that included Sacred Heart Church in Altadena, St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church and School, and St. Rita Catholic Parish and School in Sierra Madre.
Three other Catholic schools nearby but not in the Eaton Fire’s mandatory evacuation area will also be closed on Wednesday: Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Pasadena, Holy Family in South Pasadena, and Immaculate Conception in Monrovia.
As of Tuesday evening, the Eaton Fire had burned an estimated 400 acres, according to officials at the Angeles National Forest. Meanwhile, the Palisades Fire had destroyed dozens of homes and caused at least one injury to a firefighter as it threatened to spread westward towards Malibu and eastward towards Brentwood.
Neither showed any signs of containment as of Tuesday evening, and the worst of the Santa Ana winds were expected overnight into Wednesday morning.
“This is a fire that has no direction,” remarked veteran news reporter Robert Kovacik of KNBC-TV while reporting live from near the flames in Pacific Palisades Tuesday evening. “There is no way for these firefighters to find a path to know where this fire is possibly going to go.”
