A fire is burning out of control in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles,

and that fast-moving fire is being fueled by a windstorm that has produced gusts of 50 to 70

miles per hour. As of right now, the fire has already burned more than 1,300 acres of land,

but the wind speed is expected to peak tonight between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. local time.

So there is real and significant fear that this fire could continue to spread and spread rapidly.

Around 30,000 residents of the Pacific Palisades and the surrounding areas have already been evacuated.

One resident told the L.A. Times, the fire was moving so quickly that police started yelling for people to abandon their cars and telling residents to run for your lives.

The LA Times is also reporting that firefighters could be heard telling dispatchers over the radio that as many as 100 abandoned vehicles are blocking the road.

You can see right here that authorities had to use a bulldozer to move the parked cars out of the way

in order to let the firefighters through.

Right now, there are no reports of injuries or deaths, but several structures have been destroyed

and the fire is continuing to grow.

Joining me now is Chase Kane, who's an NBC News national climate reporter in the Pacific

Palisades. Chase, thank you for doing this reporting. I know you're right in harm's way here.

Can you give us a sense of what the situation is like at this hour?

Alex, the scene that you were just describing where people were literally abandoning their

cars in the road, that's Sunset Boulevard, which is just behind me here.

I know it's a bit of a black hole.

There's not a lot to see because they've turned off power.

But that road that you're looking at a Sunset Boulevard, and then you might be able to see

just on the horizon that it looks like fire, some embers may have kicked back up and and started a fire again.

I was actually with my producer trying to make our way down here to where we are now when the road just became gridlock.

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