The cause of the Hughes Fire remains under investigation, but forecasters have warned of more critical fire weather affecting the region through Thursday.

The Hughes Fire was not the first to start on Wednesday. The seven-acre Bernardo Fire in San Diego County also forced evacuations. It is now 25 per cent contained, according to CBS 8.

The new fires come as progress continues to be made to contain the deadly and devastating Palisades and Eaton Fires that tore through parts of Los Angeles last week. The Eaton Fire is now 91 per cent contained, and the Palisades is nearly 70 per cent contained.

Governor Gavin Newsom said that state resources had been deployed to assist in the federal response to the rapidly expanding Hughes fire.

“We will continue to monitor the situation closely and provide the federal government with whatever it needs to extinguish this fire,” he wrote in a post on social media.

A new fire in Southern California has exploded from 500 acres to more than 9,000 in just a few hours, prompting new evacuation orders for an area already reeling from blazes that have raged and destroyed thousands of homes.

Fire officials said a rapid ground and air assault was giving them the upper hand with Hughes fire.There were no reported homes or other structures burned.

Though the region was under a red flag warning, winds were not as fast as they had been when those fires broke out, allowing for firefighting aircraft to dump tens of thousands of gallons of fire retardant.

“The situation that we’re in today is very different from the situation we were in 16 days ago,” Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said Wednesday evening.

“This fire had a robust response today, and as you can see behind us, the responders are doing great work to try to contain this fire,” Joe Tyler, director of Cal Fire, said. “Certainly, we are not out of the woods yet.”

More than 50,000 people were under evacuation orders or warnings as a huge and fast-moving wildfire swept through rugged mountains north of Los Angeles.

The blaze, which started just days after wildfires scorched large parts of LA, has shut down schools and key highways. Parts of Interstate 5 that had been closed were reopened later in the evening.

More than 31,000 people have been ordered to evacuate, and another 23,000 are under evacuation warnings, LA County sheriff Robert Luna said.

The Hughes fire ignited about 45 miles northwest of the city of Los Angeles on Wednesday afternoon, near Castaic Lake, prompting tens of thousands to evacuate.

• The fire has rapidly expanded to approximately 9,400 acres with 0 per cent containment.
• The blaze has prompted mandatory evacuation orders for about 31,000 residents, with an additional 23,000 under evacuation warnings.
• No fatalities or structural damages have been reported so far.