Firefighters in Southern California were battling yet another fast-moving fire on Friday, with the new blaze destroying at least two buildings and leading the authorities to order 8,000 people to evacuate.

As crews continued to battle several blazes up and down the state, the most recent, named the Maria fire, flared up in Ventura County on Thursday evening and grew to cover nearly 9,000 acres as of noon on Friday. A shift in the wind late in the morning began driving the fire, which was fully uncontained, toward Santa Paula, a city of about 30,000 people.

“It has been an uphill battle ever since,” Mark Lorenzen, chief of the Ventura County Fire Department, said at a news conference.

The flames may have already been blown across the Santa Clara River and reached at least one building in the city, fire officials said. The Maria fire was just the latest blaze to swell amid dry brush, which acts as fuel, and strong Santa Ana winds that pushed several other fires through rural and suburban areas in recent weeks.