Are fires common in Malibu?published at 22:13 Greenwich Mean Time 10 December
This is not the first time Malibu has witnessed an intense fire.
In 2018, a spate of wildfires blazed through California, including Woolsey in the south, which damaged the Malibu resort area.
The fire started in Thousand Oaks, about 40 miles (64km) north-west of central Los Angeles and engulfed more than 85,500 acres of land, destroying at least 177 buildings.
Thousands were evacuated and two were killed in the city.
Luxury homes and other beach communities were razed by the fire, including the home of Hollywood actor Gerard Butler, who shared a picture of a charred house on X at the time. Properties belonging to Neil Young, Kim Basinger and Miley Cyrus were also destroyed.
Wildfires do occur naturally in some parts of the world, but climate change has made the conditions needed for them to spread are becoming increasingly prevalent, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said.