Tens of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes as a brush fire in the Pacific Palisades grew to nearly 20,000 acres by Friday.

The blaze began shortly after the start of a Santa Ana windstorm that the National Weather service warned could be the strongest to hit Southern California in more than a decade.

A brush fire broke out Tuesday near the Pacific Palisades, a coastal neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles, and quickly exploded.

The Palisades fire had grown to more than 2,900 acres as of Tuesday evening, driven by ‘life-threatening and destructive’ winds. The extreme wind event blasting Southern California is forecast to peak between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. Mark E. Potts is the senior editor for video at the Los Angeles Times. A native of Enid, Okla., Potts graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a master’s degree in broadcast journalism. He has created and edited video for DreamWorks, YouTube, Microsoft, Sony and BET. Gina Ferazzi grew up in the small New England town of Longmeadow, Mass. She has been a staff photographer with the Los Angeles Times since 1994. Her photos are a part of the staff Pulitzer Prizes for Breaking News in 2016 for the San Bernardino terrorist attack and for the wildfires in 2004. She’s an all-around photographer covering assignments from Winter Olympics, presidential campaigns to local and national news events. Her video documentaries include stories on black tar heroin, health clinics, women priests and Marine suicide. A two-sport scholarship athlete at the University of Maine, Orono, she still holds the record for five goals in one field hockey game.

As of Thursday, the Palisades fire had reached 15,000 acres, spreading to Malibu and Topanga and torching homes and restaurants along the Pacific Coast Highway. One resident told the Washington Examiner ’s video producer Natasha Sweatte that his community is coming together in this time of crisis.