July 9, 2008 Residents check on homes affected by wildfires

BIG SUR, Calif. (AP) - Firefighters pushed back a blaze
threatening this small coastal community just enough to allow
hundreds of people to check on their homes Tuesday as a separate
fire 300 miles north forced residents of other towns to evacuate.

Fire crews have been straining to cover 330 active California
wildfires, many of which were ignited by a lightning storm more
than two weeks ago. A heat wave forecast to linger in much of the
state until the weekend was making the job all the more difficult.

Winds of up to 30 mph fanned a blaze in Butte County, where
firefighters went door to door overnight to evacuate 800 to 1,000
residents from the towns of Concow and Yankee Hill, about 85 miles
north of Sacramento. Nearby Paradise, where a fire destroyed 74
homes month, was also ordered evacuated, along with Ono, a rural
town about 170 miles north of Sacramento.

"Now you're in a hell of a fire fight," said Todd Simmons, a
spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire
Protection.

Five structures have been destroyed, and the complex of fires in
Butte County was about 55 percent contained.

At least 23 homes and 25 other structures have been destroyed in
the Big Sur area, where flames have marched over more than 125
square miles of forest land since June 21.

Although that fire is far from controlled - the rugged terrain
has

Many of the 1,500 evacuated residents of Big Sur headed home
Tuesday morning through smoke and ash, anxious to gauge the damage.

Dena Angelique, 34, unloaded hastily packed bags of books,
photos, art supplies and clothes from the back of her dusty Toyota
4Runner after a week away from her home.

She was relieved to find the fire had stopped within 100 yards
of the wood-frame house, though it had charred the nearby
mountainside. She wasn't sure how long she'd stay; smoke and ashes
still floated among the blackened remains of oak and pine, burning
her throat.

"It was so insane watching the whole hillside burning," she
said. "It's so nice to come back and know that we're safer here
now."

Officials, however, cautioned that the lifted evacuation orders
did not mean conditions had drastically improved.

"They still have an awful lot of active fire there. ... There
were 2,500 residences still threatened," said U.S. Forest Service
spokeswoman Juanita Freel. She added that officials were trying to
be sensitive to residents' needs to check on their properties.

Some homes in southern Santa Barbara County also were still
threatened by another fire in the Los Padres National Forest above
the city of Goleta.

Mandatory evacuation orders were lifted for many of the 275
threatened homes, but 3,200 other homes were in areas where
residents had been warned to be ready to leave. That fire is about
50 percent contained.
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Associated Press writers Juliana Barbassa and Evelyn Nieves in
San Francisco and Christina Hoag in Goleta contributed to this
report.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)