The death toll from the wild­fires rav­aging the Los An­ge­les area rose to 16 as crews bat­tled to cut off the spread­ing blazes be­fore po­ten­tial­ly strong winds re­turn that could push the flames to­ward some of the city’s most fa­mous land­marks.

Five of the deaths were at­trib­uted to the Pal­isades Fire and 11 re­sult­ed from the Eaton Fire, the Los An­ge­les Coun­ty coro­ner’s of­fice said in a state­ment Sat­ur­day evening.

The pre­vi­ous num­ber of con­firmed fa­tal­i­ties be­fore Sat­ur­day was 11, but of­fi­cials said they ex­pect­ed that fig­ure to rise as teams with ca­dav­er dogs con­duct sys­tem­at­ic grid search­es in lev­elled neigh­bour­hoods. Au­thor­i­ties have es­tab­lished a cen­tre where peo­ple can re­port the miss­ing.

There were fears that winds could move the fires to­ward the J. Paul Get­ty Mu­se­um and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Los An­ge­les, while new evac­u­a­tion warn­ings left more home­own­ers on edge.

By Sat­ur­day evening, Cal Fire re­port­ed the Pal­isades, Eaton, Ken­neth and Hurst fires had con­sumed about 62 square miles (160 square kilo­me­tres), an area larg­er than San Fran­cis­co. The Pal­isades and Eaton fires ac­count­ed for 59 square miles (near­ly 153 square kilo­me­tres).

In a brief­ing post­ed on­line Sat­ur­day evening, Michael Traum of the Cal­i­for­nia Of­fice of Emer­gency Ser­vices said 150,000 peo­ple in Los An­ge­les Coun­ty were un­der evac­u­a­tion or­ders, with more than 700 peo­ple tak­ing refuge in nine shel­ters.

Crews from Cal­i­for­nia and nine oth­er states are part of the on­go­ing re­sponse that in­cludes 1,354 fire en­gines, 84 air­craft and more than 14,000 per­son­nel, in­clud­ing new­ly ar­rived fire­fight­ers from Mex­i­co, he said.

With Cal Fire re­port­ing con­tain­ment of the Pal­isades Fire at 11% and the Eaton Fire at 15% on Sat­ur­day night, the fight is set to con­tin­ue.

“Weath­er con­di­tions are still crit­i­cal and an­oth­er round of strong winds is ex­pect­ed start­ing Mon­day,” Traum said.

LOS AN­GE­LES (AP) —