Only hours after a gunman attacked a country music bar in Thousand Oaks, the city was once again struck with panic. This time, fire forced the evacuation of the town still reeling from the devastating shooting.
Residents in Thousand Oaks had just begun to mourn the 12 people killed late Wednesday at the Borderline Bar & Grill when the second crisis this week set the city on edge.
For hours after the shooting, people crowded into the Thousand Oaks Teen Center, anxious to find out if their loved ones had survived.
It was well past lunchtime before it began to empty out.
But by midnight, it was crowded again — this time as a fire evacuation center.
Five people have been burned alive in their cars by a wildfire in Northern California while officials warn that two other blazes ravaging the southern part of the state are zero percent contained, threatening to destroy thousands of homes.
The notorious Santa Ana winds are expected to continue fueling the three fast-moving wildfires as they tear across large swaths of the coastal state.
In Southern California, nearly 150,000 people are under evacuation orders as a pair of life-threatening fires have overtaken nearly 20,000 acres, with dry winds of up to 70mph push them westward toward the Pacific Ocean.
The larger of the two blazes, the Woolsey Fire, has already scorched as least 9,600 acres north of Los Angeles since igniting near Rocketdyne at around 2pm local time Thursday, quickly spreading southwest toward Newbury Park and Thousand Oaks, the community still reeling from a mass shooting on Wednesday night.
To the west of the Woolsey Fire a second, smaller blaze dubbed the Hill Fire has torched almost 6,000 acres in Ventura County after igniting at around the same time in Hill Canyon Thursday afternoon.
Both fires are zero percent contained as Friday afternoon, and dozens of communities on the border of Ventura and Los Angeles counties as well as the beachside city of Malibu have been ordered to evacuate as the flames approach.
Meanwhile, a third fire is raging in the northern part of the state in Butte County where dry winds have swept the Camp Fire across at least 70,400 acres north of Sacramento, after quadrupling in size overnight Thursday.
That fire has devastated the town of Paradise, where officials say nearly every structure has been razed by out-of-control flames and five people were found dead in burned out vehicles early Friday afternoon.
Over 400 fire personnel are fighting blazes on the ground Friday morning as challenging fire conditions are expected to continue through the day.
Wind alerts and red flag warnings have been issued across wide swathes of Southern California where wind gusts could reach 70mph and relative humidity could be as low as 2 percent.
No injuries have been reported in either southern fire as of Friday morning, but officials have warned that they will remain life-threatening through the weekend.
Officials have issued a mandatory evacuation order for the entire city of Malibu as the Woolsey Fire rages toward the Pacific Ocean.