Thousands flee as wildfires burn out of control in LA and homes are destroyed [Video]

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California firefighters battled wind-whipped wildfires that tore across the Los Angeles area, destroying homes, clogging roadways as tens of thousands fled and straining resources as the fires burned uncontained early Wednesday.

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 …