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.

We need to make it incredibly expensive to build in these kinds of environments,’ one expert told The Independent. ‘If the insurance industry refuses to sell policies, maybe people won’t risk it’