#BREAKING: California firefighters are battling out of control wildfires that have destroyed roads & homes as thousands of people have evacuated. STORY: Wildfires tore across the Los Angeles area with devastating force Wednesday after setting off a desperate escape from burning homes through flames, ferocious winds and towering clouds of smoke. The flames from a fire that broke out Tuesday evening near a nature preserve in the inland foothills northeast of LA spread so rapidly that staff at a senior living center had to push dozens of residents in wheelchairs and hospital beds down the street to a parking lot. The residents — one as old as 102 — waited there in their bedclothes as the night sky glowed red from flames and embers fell around them until ambulances, buses and even construction vans arrived to take them to safety. Another blaze that started hours earlier ripped through the city’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood, a hillside area along the coast dotted with celebrity residences and memorialized by the Beach Boys in their 1960s hit “Surfin' USA.” In the frantic haste 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 in that area 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 neighborhood is on fire. You need to get out.’” KEEP READING: https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/nation-world/california-wildfire-near-la/507-732d2ac8-81e7-41a3-bf78-8d07662c22a4