The Palisades Fire, which has exploded to nearly 3,000 acres tonight, has jumped Pacific Coast Highway.

The Palisades Fire, which began as a brushfire this morning during high winds and extreme wildfire risk, has grown to more than 2,900 acres, the state fire agency said.

The fire was 2,921 acres at around 6:30 p.m. local time, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said on its website about the incident.

Fire officials last gave the size of the fire at more than 1,200 acres at an afternoon news conference.

The fire was reported at around 10:30 a.m., and first fire crews found a 10-acre brushfire in winds of around 40 mph, Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin M. Crowley has said.

Daryn Simons, a producer, rushed to her Pacific Palisades home from work this morning to grab her animals — Harper, a yellow lab, and Maeve, a cat — before she fled the fire. 

“If you were looking toward the ocean, on the left it was bright blue, and on the right it looked like an inferno,” Simons said. “I’ve never seen anything so scary."

Simons was in the process of downsizing; She had picked up keys to a new condominium yesterday.   

By this afternoon, she sat in an empty, echoing condominium unit alongside her daughter, scanning the web for snippets of new information. 

The Palisades Fire was more than 1,200 acres this evening. It's burning northwest of Santa Monica.

Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency early this evening "to further support the communities impacted by this fire," his office said in a statement.

The proclamation seeks to ease the use of local government resources and empowers the governor to call up the National Guard if necessary.

Earlier, Newsom announced that his request for emergency federal funds that would cover 75% of local firefighting costs had been approved.

Despite ominous imagery from the scene, the Los Angeles Fire Department said this evening that while flames have reached the famed Getty Villa property, the museum is not on fire.

Firefighters were defending the structure as the Palisades Fire continued to spread amid winds of greater than 50 mph, fire spokesperson Margaret Stewart said.

"The Villa itself is not burning, but vegetation around the building is burning," she said. "The structure is not damaged."

In a statement just after 5 p.m., the Getty Villa Museum and the Getty Center said flames had reached the grounds on the coast in Pacific Palisades.

"Some trees and vegetation on site have burned, but staff and the collection remain safe," spokesperson Alexandria Sivak said in the statement.

Citing brush clearance and construction, the institution expressed some confidence that the Villa, which houses Greek and Roman antiquities, would survive.

"Museum galleries and library archives were sealed off from smoke by state-of-the-art air handling systems," Sivak said. "The double-walled construction of the galleries also provides significant protection for the collections."

Stephanie Libonati was at home in Pacific Palisades this morning when she glanced out the window.

“I just saw smoke and some orange and red flames — and I screamed, ‘Fire, fire, we have to go,’” said Libonati, who said she believes she was one of the first to call authorities about the fire.

She warned neighbors, got hoses and “started putting water everywhere we could,” she said.

“It was just moving so fast,” Libonati said of the flames. “It was just all a blur, kind of, we were running around just trying to get out of there.”

The fire grew from a brushfire at about 10:30 a.m. to a blaze that had burned more than 1,200 acres this evening. 

A driver who was one of more than two dozen people who abandoned their vehicles fleeing the Pacific Palisades wildfire said he was given a stark warning.

“The flames started, like palm trees near us started catching on fire,” Adam Handler told NBC Los Angeles by phone. “And then some flames came down the hill to the point where they maybe were 115 feet away.

“And either a fireman or a policeman, I think it was a policeman, started telling everybody: Get out of your car if you want to live,” he said.

Handler, his wife and their dog left their black Audi, which was later seen being shoved out of the way along with other abandoned vehicles.

“It was pretty terrifying,” Handler said. “And the smoke was really thick, and there were, like, burning embers on the ground. It was pretty scary.”

Around 30 cars abandoned on Sunset Boulevard and Palisades Drive were later cleared by dozers to provide access, the fire department said.

Kelsey Trainor, an attorney who lives in Pacific Palisades, said she fled her neighborhood around 11:30 a.m., only to get stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on Palisades Drive.

“It was all smoke around us, fire everywhere. People are just honking their horns,” Trainor said. She felt stuck, with flames on both sides of the only road out. “Gridlock — nowhere to go.”

Trainor briefly left her car to offer help and a mask to an elderly woman who was having difficulty breathing. Ash was pelting her face, driven by intense winds, she said.

Trainor said it took more than an hour to get to safety.

“What’s really scary is that it felt really unsafe for people who were doing what they’re supposed to be doing,” Trainor said, noting that she had a stockpile of supplies and a “fire bag” packed and had left before her phone chimed with an emergency alert.

“It felt really helpless,” she said.