The biggest blazes are in Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties, part of The Golden State’s famous wine country.
In Sonoma, 11 people are reported to have died. In Napa, 100-year-old Charles Rippey and his wife, Sara, 98, died after flames engulfed their home.
And now officials in Santa Rosa and Sonoma County, just north of San Francisco, have called for the evacuation of five more areas.
The latest round of evacuations comes after 20,000 people were ordered to leave when the fires broke out earlier this week.
Latest maps from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) show more than two dozen wildfires burning uncontrolled across the state.
Only a handful of the blazes are classed as ‘contained’.
Officials said wildfires were still burning across more than 115,000 acres of California as of Tuesday.
Some 2,000 homes have been destroyed by flames so far.
Images from space show thick clouds of smoke rising from California’s coastline.
In a satellite picture taken yesterday by NASA, the smoke can be seen blowing south over Santa Rosa and the San Francisco Bay area.
Further south near Los Angeles, eerie pictures showing the sky over Disneyland emerged online.
A 6,000 acre fire in hills near Anaheim, Orange County, caused the sky to over the theme park to glow a menacing orange.
Ken Pimlott, director of Cal Fire, said it was too soon to determine how the fires started.
He said his department was busy focussing on saving lives and containing the fires, but added the chance of the fires having been caused by lightning was “fairly minimal”.
He said: “All these fires are under investigation.”