50,000 people were evacuated in Los Angeles County.

A fire in the canyons north of Los Angeles on Thursday forced the evacuation as extreme winds drove flames into residential neighborhoods and threatened hundreds of homes.

The so-called Tick fire was one of at least four wildfires in the Los Angeles area. More than 500 firefighters and air tankers were deployed to beat back the flames of the Tick fire, the largest in the Los Angeles area.

Kathryn Barger, a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, said multiple homes had been destroyed in the fires.

The Tick fire alone burned 3,700 acres on Thursday afternoon, according to the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

The fires were driven by Santa Ana winds that meteorologists say could continue through the weekend and into early next week. In Northern California, the state’s largest electricity utility said it planned a large-scale, deliberate power shut-off over the weekend to reduce the risk that its equipment would ignite fires as humidity levels drop and possibly even stronger winds arrive.

16,000 acres of Sonoma County were engulfed by the Kincade fire.

The Kincade fire had destroyed 49 structures and burned 16,000 acres in Sonoma County as of Thursday night, according to Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency.

About 1,300 firefighters were battling the blaze, which was about 5 percent contained.

Evacuation orders covered 2,000 people, according to the authorities in Sonoma County. Wind gusts blew the fire through forests, leaving firefighters with little opportunity to stop or slow down the walls of flames after the fire began on Wednesday night. Sonoma County was ravaged in 2017, when the Sonoma Complex fires killed 24 and burned more than 170 square miles.

Thomas Fuller is the San Francisco bureau chief. He has spent the past two decades in postings abroad for The Times and the International Herald Tribune in Europe and, most recently, in Southeast Asia. @thomasfullerNYT • Facebook

Neil Vigdor is a breaking news reporter on the Express Desk. He previously covered Connecticut politics for the Hartford Courant. @gettinviggy • Facebook

Mihir Zaveri covers breaking news from New York. Before joining The Times in 2018 he was a reporter for The Houston Chronicle.

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