LAKE ARROWHEAD, Calif. — Firefighters battled stubborn wildfires across Southern California on Saturday, but scattered showers brought a welcome improvement in conditions.
Tropical moisture flowing from the south replaced the hot, dry Santa Ana winds that roared in a week earlier and spread fires over more than a half-million acres, destroying more than 2,300 structures, including 1,700 homes.
The number of deaths directly attributed to the fires officially rose to seven. Officials confirmed that the flames killed four suspected illegal aliens whose charred bodies were found near the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday, said Jose Alvarez, a public information officer for San Diego County emergency services. Identification of the victims was continuing.
Although more than a dozen blazes were surrounded, con-tainment of nine other blazes ranged from 97 percent to just 25 percent. More than 21,000 structures were considered threatened, and more than 15,000 firefighters were on the lines, the state Office of Emergency Services said.
Active fires burned in the Lake Arrowhead resort region of the towering San Bernardino Mountains 100 miles east of Los Angeles and in rugged wilderness above isolated canyon communities of Orange County, southeast of Los Angeles. A big blaze 60 miles northeast of San Diego stopped its advance toward the mountain town of Julian.
The main blaze, the Slide fire, was about a mile from 10,000 homes in Arrowbear, Green Valley Lake and Running Springs.
"The fire is moving away from the residences, but with the wind anything can happen," said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Lisa Jones.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said at a news conference that he would work to improve problems in the state's deployment of firefighting aircraft when major wildfires break out. The Associated Press reported Thursday that nearly two dozen military helicopters stayed grounded for days after several wildfires broke out because state personnel who must be on board were not immediately available.
Two of the California National Guard's C-130 cargo planes also couldn't help because they have yet to be outfitted with tanks needed to carry thousands of gallons of fire retardant, though that was promised four years ago.
About 4,400 people remained in 28 shelter sites, but others waited out the fires in makeshift encampments.
For other evacuees, there were losses to tally.
In San Diego's Rancho Bernardo community, Bruce Heinemann, 48, spoke with an insurance adjuster as friends sifted through his ruined home, looking for his wife's wedding ring, photos and other mementos.
Meanwhile, his daughter was at a newly rented home making lists of what they lost, and his wife was visiting department stores to get prices for the insurers.
The Heinemanns had about 10 minutes to evacuate Monday morning, just enough time to escape with some clothes and three of their four cars.
Heinemann, a self-employed loan officer, said it makes financial sense to rebuild, but they may never return to live on the street where the fire left hopscotch destruction. Some of the Spanish-style, tile-roofed homeswere left standing, while others were turned to ash.
"It sounds terrible, but I'm glad it's gone. How would you like to sit in your house when one-third of your neighbors are gone?" he said.
The Heinemanns' home is a casualty in a war that some firemanagement experts say cannot be won - as it is currently being fought.
"California has lost 1.5 million acres in the last four years," said Richard A. Minnich, a professor of earth sciences who teaches fire ecology at the University of California, Riverside. "When do we declare the policy a failure?"
Fire-management experts like Minnich, who has compared fire histories in San Diego County and Baja California in Mexico, say the message is clear: Mexico has smaller fires that burn out naturally, regularly clearing out combustible underbrush and causing relatively little destruction because thecycle is still natural. California has giant fires because its longtime policies of fire suppression - in which the government has kept fires from their normal cycle - have created huge pockets of fuel that flare into conflagrations that must be fought.
"We're on all year round," said Brett Chapman, a firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service who worked 15-hour shifts last week in the Lake Arrowhead area east of Los Angeles.
The long-term battle is one that fire experts suggest cannot be won, even with the better building codes and evacuation plans that have become a staple of government hereand across much of the West. As the events of last week illustrate the cycle roars on with higher stakes, greater risk and the grim certainty that it will happen again.
The main problem is that many in California are ruggedly obstinate about the choice they have made to live with the constant threat of fire. Even state officials who are interested in change concede that it could take a decade - and more catastrophic wildfires - before it happens.
"If you're going to live in paradise," said Randall Holloman, a bar and restaurant owner in Cedar Glen, which is in an area that has burned twice in four years, "you're going to have to deal." The California state fire marshal, Kate Dargan, said discussions had begun at the highest levels of government on some of the toughest proposals: curtailing population growth on the wildland margins or asweeping overhaul of how the public lands are managed for fire danger. But decisions are perhaps five to 10 years away because of the enormity and complexity of the task.
"In the meantime," Dargan said, "we'll have more people living out there, and if averages hold, we'll have two more catastrophic incidents like this before the decisions get made." Information for this article was contributed by Garance Burke, Elliot Spagat, Aaron C. Davis, Peter Prengaman, Maria Raquel and Steve Lawrence of The Associated Press and by Kirk Johnson and Jesse McKinley of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 1, 14 on 10/28/2007