A brush fire that started late Wednesday in the Sepulveda Pass, close to the I-405 Freeway, is being fought by firefighters.
The Los Angeles Fire Department said it was first reported shortly after 11 p.m. in Sherman Oaks, close to the freeway’s northbound lanes.
It stated that the fire, which is being referred to as the Sepulveda Fire, was spreading through dense brush and had burnt through around 20 acres of brush. 40 acres had been burnt, according to Cal Fire. According to the National Weather Service, local winds ranged from 8 to 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph.
Residents on the 1500 block of Casiano Road, north of Moraga Drive, east of Sepulveda Boulevard, west of Chalon Road, were under an evacuation notice at approximately 11:30 p.m.
At 2 a.m., all warnings were removed.
A searchable map with real-time evacuation orders is provided below.
At around 12:15 a.m., California Highway Patrol officers issued a SigAlert for southbound lanes on the Sepulveda Boulevard offramp and the Getty Center Drive offramp on both sides of the 405 Freeway.
Firefighters reported that forward movement had been halted an hour later, and just before 1 a.m., no visible flames were visible on the slope as multiple water-dropping helicopters continued to douse the area.
As water-dropping planes operated from above, scores of fire trucks were visible parked on roadways beneath the fire, with SkyCal in the sky. A helicopter was observed dumping loads of water on the biggest fire patches as the flames slowly ascended towards E. Sepulveda Fire Road.
The fire’s cause is yet unknown.
The location of the fire was only a few miles east over the Santa Monica Mountains from the present-day evacuation zones for the catastrophic Palisades Fire, which started earlier in January and destroyed thousands of houses and burned over 23,000 acres.