Thousands of people have been ordered to evacuate some of Los Angeles' wealthiest neighbourhoods after a fast-moving brush fire ignited near the Getty Center museum.
The fire broke out around 1.30am local time on Monday and has since grown to consume more than 202 hectares in the scrub-covered hills around Interstate 405, near some of the city's most expensive homes.
Basketball star LeBron James, Terminator star and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Agents of SHIELD actor Clark Gregg and Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter all said on Twitter they had been forced to evacuate their homes.
Commuters posted videos of slopes aglow with orange flames close to the road's edge.
At least five homes had burned down but there were no reported injuries, Mayor Eric Garcetti told reporters at a news conference with fire officials, warning that he expected the number to rise.
"This is a fire that quickly spread," he said, urging residents in the evacuation zone, which encompasses more than 10,000 homes, to get out quickly.
James, an area resident who plays for the Los Angeles Lakers, said he had heeded the warning and had been driving around before dawn with his family looking for shelter.
"Finally found a place to accommodate us!" he wrote a short time later on Twitter. "Crazy night man!"
Officials at the Getty art museum said the fire was burning to the north of the building, which was designed with thick stone walls to prevent fire from damaging its treasures.
The fierce winds fanning wildfires elsewhere in the state, including a large fire consuming parts of the picturesque wine country north of San Francisco, were expected to abate.
But forecasters with the National Weather Service said high winds would return later in the week and could be the strongest so far this year in the south of the state.
Marc Chenard, a forecaster with the NWS's Weather Prediction Center, said wind gusts in northern California would abate by midday and in the south of the state by later in the afternoon.
Wind gusts can be between 80kmp/h and 96kmp/h, with some significantly higher, he said.
A firefighter battling a grass fire on East Cypress Road in Knightsen, California on Sunday, October. 27, 2019 Source: AAP
The northern California wine country has borne the brunt of the fires, with more than 260 sq km burned and 190,000 people evacuated in the Kincade Fire.
Only about 5 per cent of that fire was contained early on Monday after crews lost ground against the wind-driven wildfire a day earlier.
More than 4,000 people were battling the Kincade Fire, the worst of more than a dozen major blazes that have damaged or destroyed nearly 400 structures and prompted Governor Gavin Newsom to declare a statewide emergency.
Investigators have not yet said what they believed caused the blaze, although it ignited near a broken wire on a Pacific Gas & Electric transmission tower.
More than a million homes and businesses were without power on Monday morning, most of those from planned outages. Forecasts of high winds had prompted PG&E to shut off power to 940,000 customers in 43 counties on Saturday night to guard against the risk of touching off wildfires.
PG&E expects to issue a weather all-clear for safety inspections and restoration work to begin early Monday morning for the northern Sierras and North Coast, the company said.
The governor has been sharply critical of PG&E, saying corporate greed and mismanagement kept it from upgrading its infrastructure while wildfire hazards have steadily worsened over the past decade.
