On Wednesday, tens of thousands of people were displaced by several major fires sparked by strong winds. Some residents, including Rob Sherman and his wife Cecilia Peck, were evicted more than once.

The Palisades fire forced them to evacuate their home in the Highlands region of Pacific Palisades on Tuesday. En route to a friend’s home in Eagle Rock, a neighborhood west of Pasadena, they drove through thick smoke and watched flames burn along the Pacific Coast Highway. But as of Wednesday morning, that home was also under an evacuation warning because of the Eaton fire.

“If it wasn’t so serious, I would have found it kind of funny,” Mr. Sherman said. “But it’s so serious. Everything happens against the background of life and death. I just felt like: Another day I can keep fighting.”

The couple set off again later that morning, this time to a friend’s house in Temecula, California, about 90 miles southeast.

Some people were trying to figure out where they could go where there wouldn’t be smoke — and would be accessible given the active fires.

Rochelle Duffy, 79, and her husband had been staying at a friend’s house in Altadena, California, for a week when the Eaton fire broke out. On Tuesday evening, they drove to another friend’s house in Arcadia before heading to a third house in nearby Monrovia around 2:30 a.m. The drive was short but scary, Ms. Duffy said, because the power and all the lights were out.

On Wednesday, the couple was trying to decide whether to drive north to Santa Barbara.

“We need to find out: Is the motorway continuously available?” Ms Duffy said. “Because we heard there was a fire.”

Catherine Cowles, 69, lives on a quiet street in the foothills of Pasadena, California, where she occasionally glimpses mountain lions or bobcats. At around 6.30pm on Tuesday a neighbor warned Ms Cowles and her husband of a fire in the hills above the community. In her haste to escape, Ms. Cowles left a sheet of unbaked peanut butter cookies on the counter.

The couple went to her stepdaughter’s house in Sierra Madre, just east. But within 90 minutes, they also felt like the Eaton fire was too close for safety and headed to a friend’s house in downtown Pasadena.

Ms. Cowles has lived in Los Angeles for about 50 years, she said, but has never had to evacuate.

“It makes it scarier, more real,” she said of her two escapes. “It’s like this fire is just eating its way through the entire foothills of the mountains and then just devouring everything in its path. Because what can stop it at 100 miles an hour?”

Alain Delaquerière contributed to the research.