While much of fire-ravaged Southern California lurched back toward an uneasy routine Friday and government officials made preparations for a long recovery, firefighters poised for another late-night stand against a persistent blaze in the rugged mountains of eastern Orange County.
Even as thousands of residents joyously returned to neighborhoods throughout the region, 100-foot-tall flames from the Santiago fire burned into the eastern end of Silverado Canyon. Many residents of the community on the edge of Cleveland National Forest were evacuated for the second time in less than a week. About 40 others would not budge from some of the roughly 750 homes there.
"It's an extremely active fire in Silverado Canyon right now," Rich Phelps, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman, said of the community, which was spared in several previous fires. "Things are pretty rough."
Exhausted and on edge, some of the evacuees who gathered in a nearby strip mall wept when authorities couldn't reassure them about whether they could stop the latest threat.
"It's sickening. We thought yesterday we had dodged the bullet. We heard the fire was 50% contained and away from Silverado Canyon," said Ray Verdugo, 55. "Now we're hearing that within the hour it could rip through here and take our homes."
Even in the areas where the most spectacular flames had been tamed, fire officials warned against complacency. "There's still a lot of little islands of fuel," Eric Kuck, a Los Angeles County Fire Department captain, said as his strike teams kept watch in the mountains of Orange County. "There are hot spots in the burn area we are watching, making sure the houses that were saved don't get lost."
Nine fires continued to burn Friday night, at the end of a weeklong siege that has included nearly three dozen separate blazes. The total acreage burned topped 500,000, only 12,000 acres more than had been reported a day earlier but more than double the size of all of New York City's five boroughs. The number of homes reported destroyed increased from 1,775 to 1,889. The death toll remained at seven.
In another day of multiple developments:
Authorities sought the public's help in finding a white Ford F-150 pickup that was seen in the area where the Santiago fire was started.
Fire crews were establishing a perimeter around the north end of the still-raging Slide fire in the San Bernardino Mountains. Although homes remained in danger, crews coming off other fires expanded the firefighting force by one-third, to almost 2,000.
