California wildfires wane but danger persists

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By Lisa Baertlein

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Winds eased on Monday but high temperatures continue to pose challenges for firefighters in Southern California, where wildfires have charred more than 55 square miles (142 sq km) and destroyed around 1,000 homes.

Some 50,000 evacuees have begun returning to find their houses, apartments and mobile homes burnt to the ground, or miraculously intact, after a wind-whipped weekend firestorm swept through bone-dry canyons and hillsides.

Since Thursday night, fires have scorched more than 35,000 acres (14,000 hectares) in the foothills north of Los Angeles, in Orange County canyons to the southeast, and in celebrity-heavy Montecito near Santa Barbara, to the north. Mobile homes, apartments and multimillion-dollar mansions were among the estimated 1,000 homes destroyed.

Residents of a devastated trailer park in Sylmar will board buses on Monday to view the damage. Firefighters and cadaver-sniffing dogs continue to search for possible victims at the north Los Angeles County neighbourhood that was home to many senior citizens.

People whose homes were destroyed will not be allowed on their property, while those whose homes have survived will be given 10 minutes.

Elsewhere, firefighters expect to fully contain on Monday the fire that whipped through Montecito, a wealthy enclave in Santa Barbara County. Investigators believe the blaze, which started on Thursday in a popular area for teen gatherings, was human caused.

Fire officials expect temperatures in the 80s and 90s Fahrenheit (20s and 30s Celsius) with cooling as the week proceeds and remain cautious about wind conditions, which can be unpredictable.

Firefighters, who said it would take several days to put out all of the fires, were making gains around the region on Monday and thick, choking smoke hung heavily over neighbourhoods 25 miles (40 km) away.

No deaths or major injuries have been reported and the cause of the fires was not known.

Southern California is in a drought after minimal rainfall for two years that has turned the terrain into a tinder box while population growth over the past 20 years has seen once arid brushland on city outskirts turned into housing developments.

California's fire season, which traditionally ran from June to October, has been a year-round menace as global warming has brought higher winter temperatures and less rainfall.

In October 2007, 30 blazes raged across Southern California for almost a week, forcing evacuation of more than 500,000 people and damaging some 2,000 homes.

(Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb and Jill Serjeant; Editing by Mary Milliken and Eric Beech)

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