More urged to flee California wildfires

More residents of Southern California have been urged to leave their homes despite calming winds that allowed a major aerial attack on wildfires.

The blazes have destroyed hundreds of homes in four days and blanketed Los Angeles County and surrounding areas in smoke.

More than 800 houses, mobile homes and apartments were destroyed by fires that have burned more than 34 square miles since breaking out on 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 did not 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 the damage.

The smell of smoke pervaded metropolitan Los Angeles. Skyscrapers were silhouettes in an opaque sky, and concerns about air quality forced organisers 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, allowing firefighters to set backfires to prevent flames from advancing to hillside neighbourhoods.

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 on Saturday and shooting through subdivisions entwined with wilderness parklands. Multimillion-dollar homes were threatened in Diamond Bar in Los Angeles County as the out-of-control fire pushed northward.

Fire chiefs ordered 1,400 more residents to evacuate, in addition to 26,500 who had already been told to leave.

Retired aerospace engineer Joe Gomez, who has lived in his palm-tree-lined Diamond Bar neighbourhood for 45 years, stayed put despite being under a mandatory evacuation.

“I’m trying to use some logic here,” said Mr Gomez, 72, trying to gauge the direction of the wind and flames. “I don’t think it’s going to come down this way.”

On Saturday, the fire burned 119 homes in the communities of Corona, Yorba Linda and Anaheim. In addition, 50 units of an apartment complex burned, Orange County fire spokeswoman Angela Garbiso said.

In the Orange County city of Brea, fire destroyed the main building of a high school.

About 50 miles to the north west, a large fire that torched a mobile home park in the Sylmar area of Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley had moved into the rugged San Gabriel Mountains and was burning vigorously – but well outside the city.

Authorities said 484 of the Oakridge Mobile Home Park’s 608 units were lost. The fire also destroyed nine single-family homes and 11 commercial buildings.

The park was home to many elderly residents and though no fatalities were reported and no one was reported missing, investigators were searching the site using trained dogs. The search was about 30% complete by last night.

“To this point no human remains have been found,” said Deputy Police Chief Michael Moore.