Winds calm, but more Californians flee wildfires
DIAMOND BAR, Calif. - More residents of Southern California were urged to leave their homes yesterday despite calming winds that allowed a major aerial attack on wildfires, which have destroyed hundreds of homes and blanketed the region in smoke.
Fires burned in Los Angeles County, to the east in Riverside and Orange counties, and to the northwest in Santa Barbara County. About 800 houses, mobile homes, and apartments were destroyed by fires, which have charred about 34 square miles since breaking out Thursday.
No deaths have been reported, but police brought in trained dogs yesterday to search the rubble of a mobile home park where nearly 500 homes were destroyed. They didn't find any bodies after searching about a third of the homes.
"This has been a very tough few days for the people of Southern California," Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said after touring damage.
The smell of smoke pervaded metropolitan Los Angeles. Downtown skyscrapers were silhouettes in an opaque sky, and concerns about air quality forced organizers to cancel a marathon in suburban Pasadena, where 8,000 runners had planned to participate.
Fierce Santa Ana winds that fanned the fires on Saturday weakened yesterday morning, allowing firefighters to set backfires to prevent flames from advancing to hillside neighborhoods. Air tankers swooped low over suburbs, red fire retardant billowing from their bellies as they painted defensive lines between brushlands and homes. Big helicopters shuttled back and forth on water drops.
The most threatening blaze had scorched more than 16 square miles in Orange and Riverside counties after erupting Saturday and shooting through subdivisions entwined with wilderness parklands. By midday yesterday, multimillion-dollar homes were being threatened in Diamond Bar in Los Angeles County as the out-of-control fire pushed northward.
Fire officials ordered 1,400 more residents to evacuate yesterday morning. Schwarzenegger said 26,500 people remained under evacuation orders for that fire alone.
Retired aerospace engineer Joe Gomez, who has lived in his palm-tree-lined Diamond Bar neighborhood for 45 years, stayed put despite being under a mandatory evacuation.
"I'm trying to use some logic here," said Gomez, 72, trying to gauge the direction of the wind and flames. "I don't think it's going to come down this way."
Gomez packed a bag with important documents in case he decided to leave. His wife, a stroke victim, left with their daughters earlier in the day. "My daughters were really thinking I was nuts. They said, 'These are mandatory evacuations.' I said, 'You guys just relax.' "
In the early morning, winds pushed flames dangerously close to a church and adjacent mobile home park in the Olinda Village area north of Yorba Linda, but firefighters beat it back. On Saturday, the fire burned 119 homes in the communities of Corona, Yorba Linda, and Anaheim. Captain Guy Melker of the Los Angeles County Fire Department stood on a balcony of a multimillion-dollar home in Diamond Bar, looking down into a canyon with flames on the far side. The street was under mandatory evacuation. Most driveways were empty, although luxury sport utility vehicles were still parked in some, their back seats packed with belongings.
"It's an interesting chess game right now," Melker said. "Sometimes Mother Nature puts us in check, and our job is to put her in checkmate." 