CNN
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Terrie Morin, 60, and her husband, Dave, were at the hairdresser Wednesday morning when they heard a raging wildfire was spreading toward their Camarillo home.

The couple had two guests at the time, but because their guests worked late, Morin suspected they slept through the home’s fire alarm.

‘I run into the house and bang on the door, but they didn’t hear me. They were out,” Morin told CNN. ‘Get the dog. Get out of here. You don’t have time, just leave!” she remembered telling them.

Ten minutes later, Dave saw sparks in their backyard. The temperature also rose.

“It was hot. It was so hot,” Morin remembers.

Dozens of homes in California’s Ventura County were torched in a massive wildfire that destroyed thousands of hectares of land in just a few hours during the week – prompting authorities to issue more than 14,000 evacuation orders across the region.

The mountain fire started early Wednesday and was caused by wind gusts of more than 100 km per hour. According to Cal Fire, the flames have burned through more than 20,485 acres of land.

The families who were evacuated in the blink of an eye, some saying they have now lost their homes, must deal with other losses that can also be devastating, from daily necessities like medicine and shoes, to meaningful possessions like sculptures and artwork, to loved ones souvenirs of the birth of a child or the life of a parent.

At least 132 properties were destroyed by the fire, while 88 were left damaged, Ventura County Fire Department officials said Thursday evening. Ten damage inspection teams have been deployed to inspect structures along the route of the fire.

Ten people suffered non-life-threatening injuries from the mountain fire, most of which were related to smoke inhalation, Ventura County Sheriff Jim Fryhoff said.

By the time Morin, her husband and their friends left the house, the fire had taken over the surrounding trees. There was smoke everywhere, she told CNN.

Panicking, the California resident grabbed her husband’s diabetes medication, her laptop and a few dresses, but she couldn’t get everything she wanted in time — including clothes and other memorabilia from when her son was a baby.

The four adults escaped through thick clouds of smoke.

“We couldn’t see anything. We were actually just driving in the smoke. (Dave) panicked. And I told him, ‘Dave, stop. Let me take the wheel. I’m fine. Stop,” Morin said.

According to the sheriff’s office, a total of 400 homes were evacuated by officials, while 800 homes with door knocks appeared to have already been evacuated; 250 residents chose to stay, Fryhoff said.

“We see it time and time again: people have the best intentions to stay and defend their home until the fire hits their home,” Ventura County Fire Chief Dustin Gardner said.

“And it gets hot and it gets smoky. You can’t see, you can’t breathe, and you certainly can’t defend your home. And then you’re stuck, and then our firefighters have to go in and pull you out.”

Some, with fireproofing in the structures of their homes, were exceptions. Steven Snyder was one of them.

Synder, a Camarillo resident, went to bed Wednesday as the Mountain Fire raged around his fireproof home.

“When I looked out the window, it looked like little campfires lighting up,” Snyder told CNN, adding that he saw the fire coming over the hill toward him.

When Snyder woke up Thursday, the land around him was charred. Many of his neighbors’ houses were on fire.

Fire officials in the area urged Snyder, his wife, daughter and 7-week-old granddaughter to stay home. The family lost power, but had plenty of water and food, which they shared with firefighters.

Firefighters worked aggressively to control the mountain fire by dropping water from helicopters. The fire, which was at 0% containment for more than 24 hours, is now at 5%, Cal Fire said.

According to a CNN weather analysis, the worst gusts, which helped the fire spread faster, were at wind speeds of 40 to 60 km per hour from Wednesday through Thursday morning. Winds have steadily decreased throughout Thursday afternoon and conditions are expected to improve as humidity increases over the weekend.

There is a wind speed of 5 to 10 km/h Friday – a vast improvement from the 60mph gusts earlier this week.

The red flag warnings have expired for the Los Angeles area and will expire no later than Friday at 11 a.m. PST for the Los Angeles mountains and Ventura County.

The cause remains unknown

While the reasons for the Mountain Fire’s rapid spread are clear, the cause remains unknown, a Ventura County fire official said Thursday morning.

The county fire department’s investigative unit is working on several things, including determining whether power lines were involved in causing the fire, Johnson said when asked about power lines as a possible cause.

“I could tell you there are a million things that could cause a fire,” Johnson said. “When a fire like this breaks out, we don’t initially ask ‘What started this?’ Our job is to achieve stabilization, so we started working on that immediately.”

Other devastating wildfires have previously been blamed on downed power lines that remained energized, prompting energy companies to plan widespread shutdowns before that could happen again.

Out of an abundance of caution, Southern California Edison, Southern California’s main electricity provider, deliberately shut off power Wednesday night to 69,931 customers – including 23,603 in Ventura County – as part of the public safety Power Shutoff plan.

Fall marks a crucial turning point for California’s fire season.

The combination of very windy and very dry conditions stimulates the landscape, turning it into tinder-dry fuel that can easily catch fire with the slightest spark and then spread quickly in high winds.

As the world warms due to fossil fuel pollution, scenarios like the Mountain Fire may become more common.

The number of extreme fall weather days in California has more than doubled since the early 1980s due to warmer and drier autumns as global temperatures rise, CNN previously reported.

CNN’s Taylor Romine, Rebekah Riess, Mary Gilbert and Robert Shackelford contributed to this report.