LAKE ARROWHEAD, Calif. — Crews worked to contain the wildfires that still burned in Southern California on Sunday as warmer, drier air replaced the moist weather that had earlier allowed firefighters to make strong gains.
The cloudy system that delivered rain to some areas was moving out of the region, and wind up to 15 mph was expected, but fire officials weren't too concerned.
"Nothing like we were seeing at the beginning of the week," said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. "This is fire conditions that we can actively fight, unlike the Santa Ana winds."
But there was a possibility of strong offshore winds in about a week, he said.
It was the onset of the seasonal Santa Anas - fierce, dry winds blowing from the desert and out to sea - that spread fires across more than 500,000 acres of Southern California during the week, chasing a half-million people from communities as homes burned.
As of Sunday, the state Office of Emergency Services tallied 2,767 structures destroyed. The number included 2,013 homes, office spokesman Kim Oliver said.
With more than a dozen fires fully surrounded, firefighters were pushing to complete lines around seven others. Containment of those blazes ranged from 50 percent to 97 percent.
"All the manpower is concentrated on the seven fires, so they are going to put those fires out and get them under control very quickly," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said during a visit to a victims' assistance center in El Cajon.
Seven deaths have been directly attributed to the fires, including those of four suspected illegal aliens, whose burned bodies were found near the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday.
Symbolizing the region's improving outlook, San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium held thousands of people Sunday - but this time they were National Football League fans, not fire evacuees.
The San Diego Chargers' game against the Houston Texans brought out crowds of tailgaters after a week in which it had appeared the contest would have to be moved.
Before the game, the crowd gave an ovation to a group of firefighters, law-enforcement officers and National Guard members. Four firefighters led the Chargers onto the field, and Schwarzenegger, surrounded by fire and police chiefs and team captains, presided over the coin toss. Volunteers solicited the crowd for donations to aid fire victims.
The total acreage burned in Southern California by 10 a.m. CDT Sunday was more than 516,000, an area twice the size of New York City, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The disaster may cost as much as $2.5 billion - $650 million for structures and the rest for cars, furniture and other household goods - Merrill Lynch & Co. economist David Rosenberg said in an Oct. 25 report. This could be the second-most expensive fire in recent U.S. history, after a 1991 Northern California blaze that cost $2.6 billion, he said.
State Farm Mutual Insurance Co. and Farmers Insurance Group, the largest home insurers in California, face claims from more than 9,400 customers whose homes were damaged or destroyed by wildfires and hurricane-force Santa Ana winds.
Farmers has 5,694 claims as a result of the fires and the high winds that fueled them for much of last week, said spokesman Mark Toohey. State Farm, based in Bloomington, Ill., has 3,712 claims, with 1,570 homes classified as uninhabitable, spokesman Fraser Engerman said in an e-mail.
Allstate Corp., third-largest home insurer in the state, hasn't released information on losses. Neither State Farm nor Farmers estimated the cost of the claims. The three companies together cover 52 percent of the homes in the state, according to 2006 data compiled by A.M. Best Co.
Information for this article was contributed by Chelsea J. Carter, Garance Burke, Allison Hoffman, Bernie Wilson, Aaron C. Davis and Jacob Adelman of The Associated Press and by Kelly Riddell, Chris Dolmetsch, Erik Holm and Peter Brennan of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 10/29/2007