Millions of residents in the Los Angeles area were hit early Thursday morning by a 4.7 magnitude earthquake, which struck as the region continues to battle multiple wildfires that have not yet been brought under control.

The epicenter of the quake was 4 miles north of Malibu, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake threw boulders onto a road in Malibu, visibly shook Santa Monica’s historic 1909 wooden pier and jolted people out of bed. No injuries or damage were reported.

The quake was felt as far as 45 miles (72 km) away in Orange County, where people reported feeling things moving in their homes, and was followed by several smaller aftershocks. A live camera on the 115-year-old Santa Monica Pier, about 10 miles from Malibu, showed several seconds of intense shaking. Malibu City Councilman Bruce Silverstein said he has lived in the community for 13 years and this was the strongest quake he has felt to date.

“Our house shook for about two or three seconds. I was afraid the windows were going to blow,” Silverstein said.

Several of LA’s famous residents, including Paris Hilton, took to social media shortly after. “That #earthquake was scary,” the heiress and media personality wrote on X. Reality TV star Khloe Kardashian posted, “Damn that was a big one.”

Thursday’s quake was one of several smaller earthquakes to hit the region recently, including a 4.4-magnitude quake that rattled nerves and shook buildings last month. There has now been a 14th magnitude 4.0 or greater quake in Southern California this year. While that’s above the average of eight to 10 a year in recent decades, it’s too early to tell whether the increased activity is statistically significant, said Lucy Jones, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology. The previous high was 13 quakes of this magnitude in 1988.

The quake struck as the Los Angeles area was battling three major wildfires that burned dozens of homes and forced thousands of people to evacuate. The fires broke out during a scorching heat wave that has only just begun to subside.

Firefighters hoped They took advantage of the cooler weather and slowly gained the upper hand, but not before dozens of homes were destroyed and thousands of people were forced to evacuate.

California is only in the middle of its wildfire season, but nearly three times as much land has already burned as it will in all of 2023. The wildfires have threatened tens of thousands of homes and other buildings in Southern California after they worsened over the weekend in a heat wave with temperatures above 86 degrees Fahrenheit.

No deaths have been reported, but at least a dozen people, mostly firefighters, have been treated for injuries, mostly caused by the heat, authorities said.

In the small community of Wrightwood, about 90 minutes outside Los Angeles, authorities urged residents to flee a bridge fire that had grown tenfold in size in a single day, burning more than 50,000 acres and at least 33 homes.

Erin Arias, a resident, said she ran up the mountain when she was ordered to leave and did so, taking her passport and dog with her. On Wednesday, she and her husband dumped water on the roof of their surviving home. Their cat was gone, she said.

“It’s really scary,” Arias said, looking at the burnt embers of her neighbor’s house. “We’re really lucky.”

According to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, the fire spread extraordinarily quickly across complex terrain, likely giving residents less time to evacuate than normal. Even experienced firefighters were caught off guard.

“(The fire) had to go up mountainsides, burn down slopes, jump valleys, burn over new ridges and then essentially burn back down the slope at least twice in one burn period,” Swain said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom sent National Guard troops to assist with the evacuations and the White House said Joe Biden was monitoring the situation.

Elsewhere, more than 5,500 homes in Riverside County were under evacuation orders due to the so-called Airport Fire, which affected more than 19,000 residents. Several recreation cabins and structures in the Cleveland National Forest were damaged.

In San Bernardino County, about 65,600 homes and buildings were threatened by the Line Fire. Residents on the southern shore of Big Bear Lake, a mountain town popular for winter sports and lakeside recreation, were told to evacuate Tuesday.

On the Nevada-California border near Reno, the Davis Fire forced thousands of people to evacuate over the weekend. It destroyed one home and a dozen buildings and burned nearly 9 square miles of timber and brush along the eastern border of the Sierra Nevada.