The Bryson Fire ignited in western Malibu and swelled from 1 acre to about 20 acres in roughly 30 minutes, racing through brush near the intersection of Mullholland Highway and Encinal Canyon Road as strong Santa Ana winds pushed it along.
It was first reported shortly before 5 p.m., and by 4:56 p.m. the Malibu Hills were already running hot and dry, with temperatures at 84 degrees and relative humidity at 13%. The fire was fanned by winds of about 26 mph out of the NNE, a combination that can turn a small flare-up into a fast-moving wildfire before crews can get ahead of it.
The fire appears to have started just north of Encinal, between the former Malibu Golf Club and Saddle Rock Ranch, with TV reports saying it began right next to the Camp Kilpatrick juvenile detention center. That stretch of western Malibu is sparsely populated, but the terrain still makes firefighting difficult and leaves little margin when the wind comes up.
That is why evacuation warnings were issued from the L.A. County line in the north and south toward Point Dume even as the fire covered a relatively small area. Water-dropping helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft were dispatched to the scene because access on the ground was limited and the fire was moving too quickly for anyone to treat it like a routine brush incident.
What remains unknown is the cause. The fire had already made its first big run within the first half hour, and the next question is not whether it moved fast — it did — but whether crews can pin down the ignition before the wind and terrain make the Bryson Fire harder to contain.
