Nearly 4,000 firefighters worked in blistering temperatures to corral a huge complex of fires in rugged wilderness as authorities found a body in a blackened part of the desert.
The body of Gerald Guthrie, 57, was found by a search-and-rescue crew, Cindy Beavers of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said on Saturday.
Guthrie had been missing since Tuesday, when fire swept through Pioneertown, a former Western movie locale. His body was found in a charred area at the base of a small hill less than a kilometer from his two-story domed home, which escaped the flames.
Fire officials reported some progress on the fires, which covered more than 282km2 in Southern California about 160km east of Los Angeles.
A 24,000-hectare fire was 50 percent contained, its eastern flank no longer a problem but its western side still a major concern. An evacuation remained in effect in one area, but were lifted in several others. Ignited by lightning a week ago it roared to life a few days later, destroying 58 desert homes.
An adjacent complex of fires that merged with the larger fire Friday grew to more than 6,229 hectares but was 10 percent contained. Crews protected a handful of homes in a canyon, but there were no evacuations.
The fires were burning below the flanks of the San Bernardino Mountains, but as of Saturday were not considered immediate threats to resort communities in the Big Bear Lake region atop the range.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who visited a command post at Yucca Valley High School with wife Maria Shriver, said their helicopter tour had flown close enough to see firefighters working on the ground.
``It is a huge fire. It is really extraordinary how quickly it has spread out,'' he said.
Elsewhere in Southern California, a 200-hectare blaze in Redlands was 20 percent contained after destroying one building.
In San Diego County, one 48-hectare fire in Cleveland National Forest was fully contained and hand crews were finishing off the remains of a eight-hectare blaze that spread over both sides of the US-Mexican border in Tecate, said a state fire spokeswoman.
Meanwhile, in southern Montana, firefighters mostly east of Billings were battling four large fires that charred about 40,000 hectares. The fires threatened about 150 homes, officials said.
In Wyoming, a wind shift helped firefighters keep a wildfire from advancing toward Devils Tower National Monument. Four fires near Devils Tower have burned about 5,545 hectares -- about 55km2 -- of mostly shrubs and ponderosa pine. About 10 percent of the fires were contained.
In northern Minnesota, a more than 565-hectare fire in a wilderness area near was worrying authorities, who feared it could be fueled by millions of trees that blew down in a 1999 storm
RSS