Malibu is ON THE Pacific Ocean. The highway- US 1, is 2 lanes each direction. Evacuees were going southbound, bumper to bumper-—many of which COULD have left earlier. FIRE EQUIPMENT was heading Northbound & moving as quickly as possible.
From an eyewitness who talked to me yesterday.
Over 27,000 people in Malibu area were trying to leave all at once-—almost the same number as trying to leave Paradise in N Calif. Too many people wait until they are forced to leave by mandatory evacuation.
Paradise was different-—the fire overran the town that fast-—even with traffic moving the same direction, people actually got out of their cars & started running down the hil towards Chico.
As I’m familiar with both places; most of Skyway in Paradise is about as wide as one lane and the shoulder of PCH - PCH is two lanes each way all the way through and out of Malibu, Skyway is mostly one lane each way through Paradise. Once you’re in the outskirts of Paradise, Skyway becomes a divided two lane each direction road.
Main differences - cell coverage is typically spotty in Paradise, once power started going out, it was nearly non-existent in some areas. Most of the copper wire telephone service is actually VOIP, so when the AT&T tower died, so did much of the landline service. And rather than fully evacuating the town like the order for Malibu came through, Paradise first ordered 3 zones to evacuate (along Pentz Rd) and many people dismissed further orders as being simply repeats of the existing order, not that the entire town and much of Magalia was ordered to evacuate.
Oh, and of course, in Los Angeles, there’s nearly 24/7 live copter footage showing frightening flames whereas here, we sometimes might get a distant shot from Sacramento showing smoke on the horizon.