Firefighters made progress on the more than 10,000-acre Hughes Fire Friday, which sent thousands fleeing after sparking near the Los Angeles County community of Castaic a day earlier.

Palisades Fire initially started 10:30 a.m. Jan. 7 in Los Angeles County. It has burned 23,448 acres after being active for 17 days. A crew of 2,420 firefighters has been working on site and they managed to contain 77% of the fire by Friday morning. The blaze's cause remains under investigation.

Thousands of firefighters are battling wildfires across 45 square miles of densely populated Los Angeles County. About 92,000 people remain under mandatory evacuation orders and another 89,000 are under evacuation warnings.

Firefighters on the ground and in the air rushed to slow a rapidly spreading brush fire that exploded near Castaic on Wednesday, forcing tens of thousands of evacuations and impacting traffic on the 5 Freeway.

Palisades Fire initially started 10:30 a.m. Jan. 7 in Los Angeles County. It has burned 23,448 acres after being active for 16 days. A crew of 2,420 firefighters has been working on site and they managed to contain 75% of the fire by Thursday evening. The blaze's cause remains under investigation.

Evacuation orders and warnings were issued to more than 31,000 people in the vicinity of two new wildfires north of Los Angeles on Wednesday.

The fire threat remains critical in Southern California, where thousands of residents were under evacuation orders Wednesday as fire crews battled the out-of-control Hughes Fire near Castaic, a suburb in the foothills and mountains of northern Los Angeles County.

Continued strong winds and dry conditions on Wednesday morning rapidly spread a fire near Castaic Lake in northern Los Angeles County and has burned through 8,096 acres.