Crews beat back L.A. fires, retreat to rest in San Diego

SAN DIEGO - Firefighters beat back flames on Los Angeles' doorstep Tuesday, saving hundreds of homes in the city's San Fernando Valley. But exhausted crews were pulled back in San Diego County even though two devastating blazes threatened to merge into a super fire.

"They're so fatigued that despite the fact the fire perimeter might become much larger, we're not willing to let the firefighters continue any further," said Rich Hawkins, a U.S. Forest Service fire chief. "They are too fatigued from three days of battle."

Ten thousand firefighters were on the front lines throughout the state, battling California's deadliest wildfires in more than a decade.

Since Oct. 21, at least 10 wind-driven wildfires, many of them arson, have rampaged through Southern California, demolishing neighborhoods, gutting businesses and blackening more than 500,000 acres of land from the Mexican border to the Ventura-Los Angeles county line. At least 16 people have died and nearly 1,600 homes have been destroyed. Two burn victims were in critical condition in San Diego.

"This is a total disaster," Gov. Gray Davis said. "It reminds me of when I was in Vietnam, communities were burned out."

Firefighters had feared they would lose hundreds of homes late Monday and early Tuesday as a fire in the hills between Los Angeles and Ventura counties threatened to push into neighborhoods in the densely populated San Fernando Valley, including a gated community of million-dollar mansions.

But winds subsided enough to let pilots douse the area with water and fire retardant. Backfires and bulldozers were used to clear away the fuel in the flames' path. Reinforcements were sent to help on the ground and temperatures dropped.

"They saved every one of them," said Bill Peters of the California Forestry Department.

In San Bernardino County, firefighters struggled to defend resort towns high in the mountains. The flames destroyed 20 structures on Strawberry Peak and several homes in Rimforest, and threatened an estimated $3-billion worth of houses in the Crestline, Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear areas, Peters said.

Working on narrow mountain roads, firefighters battled fires along the 20-mile stretch. About 80,000 full-time residents have been evacuated from the mountains since Saturday.

"Just about everything is burning," said William Bagnell, fire chief of the Crest Forest Fire Protection District.

California's biggest fire, a blaze of more than 200,000 acres in eastern San Diego County, formed a 45-mile front stretching into Scripps Ranch and Julian, a mountain community renowned for its apple crop.

The fire was just miles from merging with a 37,000-acre fire near Escondido.

"This fire was so fast," he said. "I'm sure we're going to find folks who simply never had a chance to get out of their houses."

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