Pepperdine University students were ordered to take shelter in several of the school’s fireproof buildings early Tuesday morning as a wildfire swept through the area just north of the Malibu campus.
The fire shut down parts of the Pacific Coast Highway and more than 2,000 nearby buildings were under evacuation orders. Pepperdine officials urged students and staff to go to the school’s library or student center and take shelter there, rather than attempting to navigate the surrounding roads.
From the fire-resistant buildings on campus, students were able to get an alarming view of the violent trajectory of the Franklin Fire.
“We saw the flames jumping over the Malibu Canyon,” said Gabrielle Salgado, a journalism student who took shelter in the library. told The New York Times.
The shelter-in-place order, which affected approximately 3,000 students and campus employees, was lifted around 8 a.m. on Tuesday. In-person classes and final exams remained canceled as power outages continued to impact campus buildings.
Pepperdine University spokesman Michael Friel told the Times that there were no injuries and no major damage to school structures, but several smaller fires had burned on campus.