Hundreds of people were forced to evacuate their homes north of Los Angeles as wildfires continued to rip through California. A fast moving wildfire driven by strong wind and high temperatures prompted evacuations in Goleta. The fire spread to vegetation before damaging or destroying at least 12 other buildings, fire officials said. The area is north of where the Thomas Fire raged last December. That blaze destroyed more than 1,000 buildings in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. “911 lines are jammed up; please only call if there is an emergency. Fire and public safety crews are active in the Goleta area,” the county fire department said on Twitter. Firefighters battling wildfires throughout the US West that have torched hundreds of homes hoped for some help from the weather Saturday even as new fires swept sweltering Southern California. A fire on the California-Oregon border that destroyed 40 buildings and claimed at least one life since Thursday remained virtually out of control, but a National Weather Service warning of extreme fire danger from heat and winds expired Friday. The first death attributed to the fires was announced on Friday, when the remains of an unidentified person were found in a home burned to the ground by the Klamathon fire, which broke out Thursday near California’s border with Oregon. No other deaths were expected, however. East of Los Angeles in the San Bernardino National Forest, authorities ordered the evacuation of the community of Forest Falls, which has about 700 homes, as a quick-moving wildfire swelled to 1,000 acres (about 1.5 square miles). In San Diego County, several fires erupted including one that burned at least five homes and perhaps many more in Alpine, in foothills not far from San Diego. Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for the county. At a Red Cross shelter, Ben Stanfill told the San Diego Union-Tribune that he and other relatives helped evacuate his mothers house, even though it wasnt in a mandatory evacuation area. The fire was only 5 percent contained Friday night, but crews had virtually stopped its growth and were focusing on knocking down hotspots that continue to threatened houses and mobile homes, state fire officials said. The new blazes came as Southern California saw many areas top 100 degrees Friday and more than a dozen areas got record-breaking temperatures for the day. The weather service forecast called for continued hot weather for much of the area Saturday. This year’s fires had burned more than 2.9 million acres through Thursday, compared with an annual average of about 2.4 million over the last 10 years, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. California was one of several Western states where recent wildfires have destroyed homes and forced thousands of people to evacuate. A Utah wildfire that burned 90 structures and forced evacuation of more than 1,100 people in a mountain area near a popular fishing reservoir was growing Friday, but fire officials hoped to increase containment soon. The blaze had burned about 75 square miles and was 4 percent surrounded. In Colorado, rain helped slow the growth of wildfires that burned dozens of homes. But the threat of a deluge raised the possibility of flooding in the area of a stubborn blaze in the southwestern corner of the state.