Southern California's mountains still glowed red yesterday as out-of-control fires devoured dying forests, chasing the region's residents into smoky traffic jams as they fled their alpine communities by the tens of thousands.
The towering peaks of the San Bernardino range east of Los Angeles and the mountains of eastern San Diego County became major fronts on Tuesday in the long arc of wildfires that have roared over more than 226,800 hectares -- about 2,278km2.
Cooler weather yesterday was expected help exhausted firefighters battling the blazes that have raged across southern California and into Mexico, killing at least 18 people.
PHOTO: AFP
The firefighters hoped to take advantage of a drop in temperatures to try to save mountain communities from being destroyed by the surrounding flames.
Seventeen fires moving across the state have incinerated 2,000 homes, destroying entire suburban neighborhoods, in one of the state's worst wildfire seasons.
Officials have grimly predicted that more charred bodies would be uncovered when the flames were finally doused and rescue workers moved in.
They were especially worried about the border area with Mexico, a rural area used as a passage into the US by illegal immigrants.
"We haven't seen this intensity of fire and number of residents being affected ever before," said Andrea Tuttle, director of California Department of Forestry.
"This is an extraordinary 100-year event .... This is Mother Nature's natural fire cycle and when you get winds like this it will overwhelm, for awhile, our ability to deal with them," she said.
Governor Gray Davis estimated that by the time all of the fires were put out the cost to California, which is already reeling from financial woes that prompted voters to throw him out of office, would be nearly US$2 billion.
Officials said a cold front moving in from the north yesterday was expected to give them cooler weather -- a key element in battling the wildfires -- but could also prove dangerous as accompanying high winds collided with hot air and created unstable conditions.
They declined to speculate when the largest fires now threatening mountain communities in San Diego and San Bernardino counties would be under control.
The biggest worry remained the so-called Old Fire, which had marched through the San Bernardino Mountains and surrounded 16 small mountain communities about 113km east of Los Angeles.
Some 40,000 residents poured off the mountain in the face of a towering firestorm that caught crews off guard and raced toward the resort towns of Crestline, Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear.
In San Diego County, where two major fires have destroyed more than 500 homes and killed 12 people, officials were forced to rest exhausted crews who had been on the fire lines for three days without sleep. The area's two main fires were lapping toward each other and threatening to merge into one superblaze, officials said.
President George W. Bush has declared a state of emergency in four counties, and governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger was visiting Washington yesterday to meet congressional leaders yesterday to ask for the federal funds triggered by Bush's declaration of a state of emergency.
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