Fires

After more than a month of testimony, the trial of Raymond Lee Oyler ended Thursday with the prosecution describing the Beaumont mechanic as a murderer who set a killer wildfire for his own amusement and to satisfy a lust for power. The defense conceded that Oyler set 11 fires, just not the 2006 Esperanza fire that killed five firefighters. "Those five men were killed by a man who taught himself to use fire as a weapon," said Riverside County Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Hestrin.

Troubled by recent wildfire deaths in Australia, California fire chiefs have put on hold an ambitious new firefighting model that would encourage some homeowners to stay and fight advancing flames. Proposed guidelines for the program could be delayed for months, and perhaps scratched altogether, as California fire officials look closely at what went wrong in Australia, said Bob Roper, vice chairman of Firescope, the statewide fire panel considering the change.

Fire crews in Oklahoma and Texas raced Thursday to control wind-whipped wildfires that destroyed dozens of homes, forced evacuations and shut down parts of a major highway. Howling wind that had gusted to more than 50 mph grounded air-based firefighting efforts in Oklahoma and drove blazes that scorched neighborhoods like "a war zone," Midwest City Police Chief Brandon Clabes said.

An out-of-control wildfire continued to tear through the forests and subdivisions of coastal South Carolina on Thursday, destroying dozens of homes, forcing the evacuation of 2,500 residents and threatening nearby Myrtle Beach, one of the state's largest and best-known tourist draws. The fire started Wednesday afternoon in an area northwest of the 60-mile stretch of popular beach towns known as the Grand Strand.

A wind-driven brush fire Tuesday in the Santa Barbara foothills charred at least 420 acres, forced the evacuation of about 1,000 homes and renewed grim memories of the devastating fires that swept through the area last fall. The Jesusita fire started about 1:50 p.m., racing through thick chaparral on the slopes above San Roque Canyon. It was burning about a mile west of November's Tea fire, which destroyed more than 200 homes in Santa Barbara and Montecito.

Everyone in Mission Canyon knew these days of flame and smoke would come. It was just a matter of when and how bad it would get. They had staged evacuation drills, set up phone trees and put herds of brush-munching goats to work. They had cut down clusters of eucalyptus and bought metal shutters to protect against flying embers. By Thursday, the Jesusita fire had scorched the canyon's green umbrella and destroyed dozens of homes.

At 9 a.m. Thursday, three men met on the ridge and studied the mountainside above their homes. The worst looked to be over. White smoke rose in listless little spirals from blackened earth. The air was still. The mourning doves did their usual dirge from the overhead lines. Sprinklers swish-swished. But Santa Barbara's endemic twist on the Santa Ana -- the "sundowner" wind -- is as cagey as it is ferocious.

Denise Cutbirth and her three teen daughters, two Australian shepherds and a chinchilla named Chinny were on their third day in a two-bedroom suite at Motel 6, which they have taken to calling Noah's Ark. David Caffo and his partner, Thom Zimerle, opted for the luxury of the Biltmore Hotel, which knocked its rate down to $250 a night for fire refugees, more than half off the usual cost. Other than the steep discount, it was hard to tell that anything was out of the ordinary.

Fire officials Sunday said the Jesusita fire destroyed 77 homes, more than double their earlier estimate, and concluded that the blaze was probably started by someone using power tools to clear brush. Mild weather allowed firefighters to make progress in containing the fire to the more than 8,700 acres it has burned.

A fire last week that killed 44 children at a Mexican day-care center was caused by a damaged air conditioner in a neighboring warehouse, the attorney general said Wednesday. Authorities are investigating whether owners, employees or government officials could face negligence charges after the fire raged through the ABC day-care center in the northern city of Hermosillo on Friday, Atty. Gen. Eduardo Medina Mora said.