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(LOS ANGELES) — A wind-whipped Southern California brush fire that exploded to over 20,000 acres in about 24 hours, destroying homes and prompting mass evacuations, remained out of control Thursday as Gov. Gavin Newsom rallied state and federal resources to battle the blaze.

The governor declared a state of emergency in Ventura County as firefighters struggled to gain an edge on the Mountain Fire, which had burned 20,484 acres and destroyed an undetermined number of homes since starting near the town of Camarillo. The blaze was 5% contained Thursday evening.

The November fire came amid unseasonably warm temperatures and strong Santa Ana winds. The National Weather Service issued red-flag warnings for Ventura and Los Angeles counties that are to remain in effect through at least Friday morning.

Aerial footage from ABC Los Angeles station KABC showed what appeared to be row after row of destroyed homes in the towns Camarillo, Moorpark and Somis.

Multiple people were taken to the hospitals to be treated for smoke inhalation and other injuries, Ventura County emergency officials said. Some victims became trapped in their cars as they raced from the fast-moving flames, officials said.

In a press conference Thursday evening, Ventura County Fire officials said 88 structures has been damaged and 132 structures were destroyed, the majority of which were homes.

Offcials said there were 10 confirmed injuries, most due to smoke inhalation and all were deemed non-life threatening.

At least 14,000 people were ordered to evacuate, said Ventura County Sheriff Jim Fryhoff.

Newsom announced on Wednesday that he has mobilized statewide resources to help battle the fire and has secured a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to make vital resources available to extinguish the fire.

The California Office of Emergency Services said it had prepositioned 48 pieces of firefighting equipment, nine helicopters and over 100 personnel in 19 counties across California in advance of dangerous fire weather forecast in many parts of coastal and inland California.

“This is a dangerous fire that’s spreading quickly and threatening lives,” Newsom said in a statement. “State resources have been mobilized to protect communities, and this federal support from the Biden-Harris Administration will give state and local firefighters the resources they need to save lives and property as they continue battling this aggressive fire.”

The Mountain Fire is one of two wind-driven fires that broke out in Southern California, leading the NWS to issue rare November red flag warnings for Los Angeles and Ventura counties alerting of an “extreme fire risk” from Malibu into the San Gabriel Mountains, north of Los Angeles, where winds could gust near 100 mph.

“A very strong, widespread, and long-duration Santa Ana wind event will bring widespread extremely critical fire weather conditions to many areas of Los Angeles and Ventura counties Wednesday into Thursday,” according to the NWS warning.

The cause of the fire remained under investigation Thursday.

Due to extreme wind conditions, fixed-wing aircraft are unable to assist in firefighting efforts, according to the Ventura Fire Department, which said ground crews, helicopters and mutual aid resources are “actively working to protect lives and property.”

Broad Fire

A second wildfire erupted in Los Angeles County’s Malibu area Wednesday — named the Broad Fire — and has burned at least 50 acres southwest of South Malibu Canyon Road and the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) in Malibu, according to CAL Fire.

The fire was 15% contained Wednesday evening, according to the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

Local fire officials have warned residents to prepare for potential evacuations and the PCH has been closed in both directions between Webb Way and Corral Canyon.

Santa Ana wind conditions

Named after Southern California’s Santa Ana Canyon, the region’s Santa Ana winds bring blustery, dry and warm wind that blows out of the desert, drying out vegetation and increasing wildfire danger.

The long-duration Santa Ana wind event was expected to peak late Wednesday, becoming moderate on Thursday, then tailing off to light offshore winds on Friday.

Northeast winds moving 20 to 40 mph with gusts up to 60 mph are expected across the canyons and passes of Southern California, with higher winds in the more wind-prone areas.

Another surge of wind is expected to peak through Thursday morning with widespread northeast winds of 20 to 30 mph with gusts to 50 mph before weakening considerably by Thursday afternoon.

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(ATLANTA) — Vice President Kamala Harris will campaign with former President Barack Obama for the first time Thursday night in must-win Georgia at a star-studded rally near Atlanta to kick off her “When We Vote We Win” concert series to turn out voters in the election’s closing stretch.

Bruce Springsteen, whose music has peppered many Democratic presidential candidates’ set lists, is set to perform at the get-out-the-vote concert, with stars with Georgia ties joining Harris as well, including Spike Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, Tyler Perry and Mix Master David, according to the campaign.

A senior campaign official said they view these large events as ways to draw in large crowds of voters and to encourage them to cast their ballots early, and to sign up to volunteer for phone banking and door-knocking shifts.

Harris is set to appear with former first lady Michelle Obama in Michigan on Saturday, campaign officials said.

The Obamas endorsed Harris in July and both spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August.

As of Monday, more than 1.5 million Georgians voted early, surpassing the similar first eight days of early voting in 2022, 2020 and 2018, according to the office of the Georgia Secretary of State.

Georgia is a prime target for the Harris campaign as they look to hold on to a state President Joe Biden won by only 11,779 votes. And it’s bound to be close again. Former President Donald Trump is currently leading Harris in Georgia by 1.5%, according to 538’s polling average.

In the final days of the race, Harris’ team has enlisted celebrities to help share her message and get voters out during early voting periods across the country. On Saturday, Harris was joined by Lizzo in Detroit and Usher in Atlanta, while on Tuesday, Eminem introduced Obama at a Detroit rally.

Also, megastar Beyoncé is set to join the vice president at a rally in the singer’s hometown of Houston on Friday.

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(TAMPA, Fla.) — It has been more than 100 years since Florida’s Tampa Bay area – a region especially vulnerable to storm surge and flooding – faced a direct hit by a hurricane.

But Hurricane Milton is now heading straight for Florida’s Gulf Coast, with landfall and a 15-foot storm surge possible in Tampa by late Wednesday night, meaning residents are racing to evacuate ahead of the storm even as they continue to clean up the damage from Hurricane Helene.

Here’s why Hurricane Milton is posing such a threat to the Tampa Bay region:

Why is Tampa susceptible to flooding and storm surge?

The two major surrounding bodies of water – the Gulf of Mexico and surrounding bays – as well as the low-lying coastline make the Tampa Bay area especially susceptible to storm surge, according to experts.

The continental shelf in the Gulf of Mexico extends far offshore, up to 150 miles in some spots, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. When water gets “shoved” onto the coast from tropical systems, it has nowhere to go but onto the land, Marshall Shepherd, director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia and former president of the American Meteorological Society, told ABC News.

Additionally, when it comes to storm surge, it isn’t the strength of the storm that matters, but rather the size, Shepherd noted. That’s because the larger is the storm system, the longer water gets pushed onto shore, according to Josh Dozor, general manager of medical and security assistance at International SOS, a risk mitigation company, and former deputy assistant administrator of FEMA.

“When you have a large storm, it enables the gradual, continuous buildup of storm surge as it approaches,” Dozor told ABC News. ” … That 10 to 15 feet of storm surge could result in 10 to 15 feet over what is normally dry land.”

It isn’t uncommon for rising waters from Hillsborough Bay, which comprises the northeast arm of Tampa Bay, to spill onto Bayshore Boulevard, a scenic waterfront roadway in South Tampa that serves as recreation for residents, as well as a common route for drivers. Bayshore Boulevard flooded ahead of and during Hurricane Helene, when the storm surge was less than is currently forecast for Hurricane Milton.

Hurricane Helene’s impact is still fresh

The Tampa Bay region is nowhere near done with recovery and cleanup from Hurricane Helene, which made landfall Sept. 30 and brought six feet of storm surge to the Tampa area’s coastlines. The storm’s size allowed for that surge to infiltrate homes and businesses along the Gulf Coast from Cedar Key to Fort Meyers – each of which is about two hours north and south of Tampa, respectively – residents told ABC News.

In Dunedin, Florida, located on the Gulf Coast at the northernmost tip of Tampa Bay, mountains of debris still litter the streets and people were still airing out their belongings when evacuation orders for Hurricane Milton were issued, Dunedin resident Candace Allaire, 39, COO of the Crown & Bull restaurant, told ABC News.

While the restaurant’s newly renovated kitchen weathered the brunt of Helene’s damage, the rest of the neighborhood was destroyed, Allaire said. Many homes for Allaire’s family and employees, as well as neighboring restaurants, had four feet of standing water in them for hours as Helene barreled through, she said.

The emotional toll of Helene less than two weeks ago, and Hurricane Ian two years ago, is still pervasive in the community. Rebecca Kuppler, mother to a 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter, lost everything in Hurricane Helene. The family had evacuated to Orlando ahead of the storm and heard from neighbors that the water line was rising higher and higher, she told ABC News.

“It’s not stuff,” Kuppler said of the loss. “It’s our home, it’s the memories, it’s the love, the time you put into that, and that’s what’s been really hard.”

The pile of debris outside of Kuppler’s home was still there as the forecasts for Hurricane Milton began, prompting the family to evacuate yet again.

The back-to-back storms are reminiscent of the 2004 hurricane season, when Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne all struck Florida within a six-week period.

“It’s an extreme amount of stress, and if it happens once in a while, I think people can weather it,” Dozor told ABC News. “But when it happens a couple times a year or a couple times every few years, it takes a great toll on people.”

How climate change is increasing the storm risk in the Tampa Bay region

The extreme threat from hurricanes that the Tampa Bay region faces is also likely being influenced by our changing climate.

Human-amplified climate change is the primary cause for present-day rising sea levels, according to a consensus of climate scientists. It’s also triggering more frequent and more intense extreme rainfall events, experts say.

While many factors contribute to the magnitude and impact of storm surge and coastal flooding, average sea levels for many Gulf Coast communities are more than six inches higher today than they were just a few decades ago, data shows.

Human-amplified climate change also likely affected how fast Hurricane Milton intensified as it tracked over the warmer than average waters of the southern Gulf of Mexico, according to researchers. The record-high sea surface temperatures observed in this region over the past two weeks were made up to 400 to 800 times more likely by climate change, according to a rapid attribution analysis by Climate Central.

Warm ocean waters provide the energy hurricanes need to form and intensify. The warmer the water, the more powerful the storms typically are.

While a link has been established between the unusually warm sea surface temperatures and human-caused climate change, it is not yet known to what degree that climate change may have influenced Hurricane Milton’s development.

How Tampa Bay is preparing for the storm

Mandatory evacuations are in place for six counties in Florida, with Tampa at the center of the threat. Airports, businesses and schools from Tampa to Naples, some 170 miles south, are closing in preparation for Milton.

The Tampa area is one of the top five places for evacuations due to potential storm surge, Dozor said. Tampa Mayor Jane Castor issued a dire warning, urging those in the evacuation zones to heed evacuation mandates.

“If you choose to stay in one of the evacuation areas, you are going to die,” Castor said in an interview with CNN Monday night.

While FEMA and emergency management at the state and local levels report that they are adequately prepared for Hurricane Milton, it is incumbent upon residents to follow instructions and get themselves out of harm’s way in a timely manner, Dozor said. In highly populated cities along the Tampa peninsula, like Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater, it is important for people to leave early because of the limited roadways.

“There are a lot of bottlenecks that hinder quick and efficient movement of populations to be able to leave the peninsula of Tampa,” he said.

It appears that residents are heeding the warnings, Dozor noted. Beginning on Monday, standstill traffic could be seen for miles on I-75 and the Sunshine Skyway, the bridge that spans the Tampa Bay, as residents embarked on a mass exodus to safety.

At 4 a.m. on Tuesday, Candace Allaire and her fiancé evacuated north to Destin, in Florida’s panhandle, to ride out the storm. Fuel was hard to come by in preparation of their road trip, she said.

In addition, hotel availability is most major Florida cities to which residents might evacuate – such as Fort Lauderdale, Gainesville and Jacksonville – is already extremely low, Dozor said.

“All the hotels are reserved for people who’ve obviously been evacuated,” he said.

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