Editor’s note: Follow live updates on Southern California’s wind-driven wildfires here.

CNN
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The strong winds that sparked raging wildfires across Southern California this week are expected to gain momentum Thursday – worsening conditions for firefighters already battling limited visibility to save lives.

The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning through 6 p.m. Thursday, describing “extreme and life-threatening fire behavior.” The warning is expected to affect 25 million people in Southern California and the greater San Francisco Bay area.

Earlier this week, forecasters warned that conditions were worryingly similar to those responsible for “some of the worst fires in Southern California history.”

All schools in Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles, were closed until Friday because of the fires.

Here’s the latest:

Christina Noren, 50, and her husband Paul Boutin, 62, quickly evacuated their Camarillo Heights home around 12 p.m. Wednesday.

They only had time to grab their dog, their laptops, a few clothes, toothbrushes and Boutin’s thyroid medication.

Boutin has been in remission from thyroid cancer since August, but only had surgery last week and the couple feared Boutin might inhale smoke. They chose to evacuate to a hotel more than 100 miles away in Pismo Beach rather than a closer evacuation center.

“You know, the last thing he needs is to be breathing smoke for the next two or three days,” Noren said.

Noren said she began to worry about the smoke in the sky around 11 a.m. Within 45 minutes, police and firefighters were knocking on doors in their neighborhood and telling people to leave immediately.

“And they were really like, get the fuck out now,” Noren said.

Noren was an artist and has been collecting art for over 30 years. Her collection includes artists such as Catherine Opie, Nathan Oliveira and Brent Estabrook – as well as some of her own pieces from 30 years ago. When she evacuated, she had to leave everything behind.

“These are large-format works. These are 8 foot by 8 foot sculptures and 8 foot by 8 foot paintings. This isn’t stuff you throw in the Prius,” Noren said.

She said she would “cry and scream profusely” when her collection was gone.

“Many of them I made with my own hands. That’s why I’m a lot more worried than Paul,” Noren said.

A brush fire in Malibu is still burning – but its progress was halted after it burned at least two buildings and closed the Pacific Coast Highway for part of Wednesday.

“It was extremely windy here today. The wind was blowing so hard. “The fire started because of the strong winds,” Komal Kapoor, a visiting professor at Pepperdine University, told CNN, explaining that she had issued a “red flag warning” from the National Weather Service for strong winds in Ventura County and Los Angeles received counties.

Kapoor added that fires are part of the “reality in Los Angeles” and professors can only follow the instructions of emergency officials and reassure students.

According to the Los Angeles Fire Department, two buildings caught fire and there were no reported injuries.

According to the Los Angeles Weather Service, there were north-northwest wind gusts of up to 51 miles per hour and humidity of 11% at the time of the fire.

So far this year, wildfires across the state of California have scorched more than 1,015,138 acres, compared to 332,822 acres according to Cal Fire this time last year.

The threat of fire is so great that two of the state’s utilities have shut off power to thousands of Californians to prevent electrical equipment from igniting flames.

Energy facilities have the potential to spark fires, particularly if conditions are as extreme as predicted through Thursday. PG&E was ordered to pay $45 million in a settlement for its equipment’s role in causing the Dixie Fire – California’s second-largest blaze in history – in 2011.

More than 11,000 Southern California Edison customers in five counties had their power shut off Wednesday morning. According to the utility’s website, nearly 250,000 customers could be affected.

According to the utility’s website, thousands of PG&E customers were affected by power outages as of Wednesday morning and will continue through Thursday.

CNN’s Taylor Galgano, Taylor Romine, Emma Tucker, Robert Shackelford, Chris Boyette and Mary Gilbert contributed to this report.