More than 500,000 people have been ordered to evacuate their homes in California's San Diego County as wildfires rage across the state.
San Diego County officials said that approximately 513,000 people in the district had received mandatory evacuation orders and an additional 12,000 people had been advised to leave their homes.
San Diego County has emerged as the ground zero of California's wildfire crisis, with hundreds of thousands of people forced to flee from the multiple fires that have sprouted across the region.
In San Diego County alone, the fires had devastated more than 200,000 acres.
Officials in the US state of California have said that more than 600 homes have been destroyed by wildfires.
Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has drafted in 1,500 National Guardsmen to support several thousand personnel battling some 13 wildfires.
Firefighters are struggling to control the flames and forecasters predict that strong winds will continue until later in the week.
Mr Schwarzenegger has declared states of emergency across several counties.
The causes of the different fires raging throughout the state vary, with a fallen power line believed to be the cause of the blaze in Malibu and arson blamed for a fire in Orange County that torched 15,000 acres.
One person has been killed and more than 20 people injured since the fires began.
