LA wildfire causes 'significant damage' at school made famous by Hollywood

A well-known high school in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles has reportedly sustained "significant damage" as wildfires rage in the US city.

Parts of Palisades Charter High School - which counts celebrities including Will.i.am and Forest Whitaker among its alumni and has itself been a Hollywood filming location - have been affected, local schools official Alberto Carvalho said.

As well as the Palisades Fire - which has quickly spread to cover nearly 3,000 acres - several other blazes have ignited nearby. Thousands of people have been evacuated.

The school's website says it has closed - and urged pupils and their families to avoid the area. The BBC has asked for further comment.

The school, which educates children aged 14-18, says its students come from a broad area of western Los Angeles. Its buildings are known as a location for films including Carrie, Teen Wolf and Freaky Friday.

Los Angeles is in a state of emergency, and an interactive map managed by fire officials confirms that the fast-moving fires have affected a swathe of land on which the school is located.

The map notes that the Palisades Fire - like other nearby blazes - is totally uncontained. About 30,000 people have been told to leave their homes.

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The new school term had yet to begin on Tuesday, although a small number of students and staff were on site, according to the LA Times. They were rapidly evacuated, and no injuries have been reported.

The newspaper said the school's sporting facilities had been damaged, but that the extent to which buildings had been impacted was unclear. Firefighters were on the scene, the newspaper added.

Although he acknowledged the reports of damage during a press conference on Wednesday morning, Mr Carvalho, the LA Unified School District superintendent, did not give further details.

A reporter for the BBC's US partner, CBS News, confirmed that flames could be seen coming from the premises - but said it was not clear what was burning. An evacuee speaking at the scene described the fires as "armageddon".

The separate Palisades Charter Elementary School nearby has also reportedly been caught up in the blaze. The two are among several schools in the area that have closed as a result of mandatory evacuation orders, Mr Carvalho said.

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The wider Pacific Palisades neighbourhood is known as an upscale celebrity haunt. Schitt's Creek actor Eugene Levy is among those who have been forced to leave their homes - and others, including Tom Hanks and Jennifer Aniston, have reportedly had to do the same.

More than 1,400 firefighters have been deployed to combat the "unprecedented" blazes currently raging around Los Angeles, California Governor Gavin Newsom said earlier.

Fire ecologist Chad Hanson said January was still considered to be wildfire season in this part of California, and that the biggest influence were the Santa Ana winds.

"These winds are unique to southern California," he said, explaining that they result in" extreme, sustained wind events with pretty dramatic gusts."

Additional reporting by Thomas Mackintosh

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