Fires

Hadie Mohd last saw his father as he headed out to the family's vacated home to paint over anti-Arab and white supremacist graffiti scrawled across the walls inside. "He said he would be back before sundown," Mohd said. "And he always kept his word." But when sundown came, Ali Abdelhadi Mohd had not returned. About 9:45 p.m. on June 27, neighbors in this scruffy high-desert town heard an explosion they said sounded like a sonic boom. Flames engulfed the single-story home.

Denis Leary was recently back from a holiday on the Italian Riviera, la-di-da. He stars in FX's "Rescue Me," now nearing the end of its fifth season -- and also appears as a sensitive saber-toothed tiger in the "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" in theaters now. -- How's your lovely wife? Do you have tips on how to make it 20 years? I think that ultimately we would probably both agree that it's not like we have some secret, it's more like the big-bang theory.

The 57 Freeway in Fullerton was closed in both directions Thursday night after a fatal accident involving a semi-truck and a passenger vehicle, the California Highway Patrol said. The accident occurred about 7 p.m. at the Chapman Avenue exit near Cal State Fullerton. One person, believed to have been the driver of the truck, was killed, according to the CHP. Four people were injured and taken to nearby hospitals, according to Fullerton Fire Chief Gary Dominguez.

Hundreds of homes remained threatened late Friday by two out-of-control wildfires in mountain areas near Santa Cruz and Santa Maria that cast black plumes of smoke for miles along the Central Coast. A state of emergency was declared Friday in Santa Cruz County, where the Lockheed fire has damaged two structures and blackened more than 4,000 acres since Wednesday. Mandatory evacuations were ordered for about 2,400 people in Bonny Doon and Swanton, communities in the Santa Cruz Mountains where the last major fire occurred in 1948, authorities said.

A fire at a wedding tent Saturday killed at least 41 women and children guests and injured 76, authorities said. The official Kuwait News Agency quoted the chief of the fire department, Brig. Gen. Jassem Mansouri, as saying 41 bodies had been recovered from the scene in Jahra, west of Kuwait City. The news agency said 76 people are in hospitals. Interior Ministry spokesman Col. Mohammed Saber said the cause of the fire has not been determined. Wedding parties in this conservative oil-rich country are held separately for men and women.

A fire that has burned more than 87,000 acres in Santa Barbara County was started by an illegal marijuana operation, authorities said, apparently making it the first major wildfire in the state caused by drug traffickers. The county sheriff's department, which has recently eradicated other nearby marijuana plots, believes the site was run by a Mexican drug organization, but officials Sunday declined to say how investigators reached that conclusion. Narcotics agents say hidden marijuana gardens are increasingly being planted in California's mountainous regions, including its vast national forests.

The parents of a man who burned to death in an apartment building have sued the landlord, alleging that Frank McHugh's negligence of fire safety codes contributed to the death of their son and the injuries of his roommate. The parents of Mayqui Diaz allege that the security bars on his ground-floor apartment in the Pico Union neighborhood had been illegally wired shut, trapping him when he tried to escape from the March 2008 fire. Neighbors eventually responded to his screams and pried the bars off in time to save his roommate, the suit said, but it was too late for Diaz and he died the next day at a hospital.

Dozens of wildfires broke out across Greece, burning olive groves, cutting off villages and sending residents fleeing Saturday as one of the largest blazes swept perilously close to the capital's northern suburbs. The fires north of Athens were reported in an area more than 25 miles wide. Authorities were forced to evacuate two large children's hospitals, campsites, villages and outlying suburban areas threatened by blazes that sent huge clouds of smoke over the capital and scattered ash on city streets.

An easing of gale-force winds early today offered hard-pressed Greek firefighters a brief respite after wildfires raged for two days north of Athens, burning houses and swathes of forest while forcing thousands to evacuate. Officials warned that the vast blaze was still threatening inhabited areas on the capital's northern fringes and near Marathon -- site of one of history's most famous battlegrounds. "There are fewer hazardous points," fire brigade spokesman Yiannis Kappakis said.

A massive wildfire that destroyed homes and forests receded Monday as a multinational airborne effort beat back flames that at one point threatened Athens' northern suburbs and raged near the ancient battleground at Marathon. As winds died down late Monday, fire brigade spokesman Yiannis Kappakis said there were "no significant active fronts" left of the fire, which for days has sent a pall of smoke that plunged parts of the Greek capital into a brown half-light. Thousands of people were forced to flee their homes.