Joy ? and Despair: Toll: 7 Dead; Four in Migrant Camp; Bush: Offers Sympathies, Federal Aid

Oct 26, 05:37 AM

Current Headlines: By Kim Minugh, Tony Bizjak and Deb Kollars, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

Oct. 26--SAN DIEGO -- The death toll from this week's fires in Southern California grew to seven Thursday with the discovery of two charred bodies in a home in San Diego County and the remains of four individuals in a migrant camp, authorities said.

Thursday brought an unsettling mixture of relief, sorrow and ongoing edginess to the region as neighborhoods reopened, shelters cleared out and people returned to their homes -- some destroyed, some mercifully standing.

As winds subsided, fire crews took to the air with a fury, bombarding nine wildfires that still raged uncontrolled in four different counties. Thousands of households remained under mandatory evacuations on the fifth day of the firestorm.

The situation was grave enough to draw President Bush to the area Thursday morning. He toured burned-out communities, offered personal condolences to individuals who suffered losses, and pledged a wave of federal aid to help Southern California recover.

In addition to the fire-related death of a Tecate man Sunday, the burned bodies of a man and a woman were found in a home near Poway in San Diego County during the night Wednesday. On Thursday, the U.S. Border Patrol reported finding four burned bodies in a camp in the Barrett Lake area of eastern San Diego County, San Diego Sheriff's Lt. Phil Brust said.

The four are believed to have been migrant workers who fell victim to the Harris fire in southeast San Diego County, San Diego County Office of Emergency Services spokesman Jose Alvarez said.

Alvarez said another seven people died from other health issues during or after evacuations.

The massive fires, which broke out Sunday when fierce Santa Ana winds began to blow, numbered 23 and were roaring in seven counties at the height of the disaster.

Fire crews on the offensive

One by one, fire crews began getting a grip on the fires Wednesday and Thursday. As of late Thursday afternoon, nine fires were still uncontained.

"We are making great progress," said Daniel Berlant of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as Cal Fire. He cited cooler offshore airflows and a decrease in Santa Ana winds. "Wind speeds are in single digits. That allows firefighters to attack fires."

By late Thursday, 489,894 acres had burned, and more than 2,000 structures were destroyed, nearly 1,500 of them homes.

While the fire battles continued, communities from Malibu to San Diego began moving into recovery mode.

The scenes ranged from joy to despair.

Sirai Austin slipped without permission into her heavily damaged Del Dios neighborhood west of Escondido Thursday and inventoried the status of homes. She took notes and marked on a map X's where homes were lost.

Later, she shared the information with her neighbors, who were still waiting to get to their homes.

Their questions came rapid-fire: Is my house OK? What about the goat house? And the green home that had the garden? The house with the old cars?

When it came time to report the status of her own home to her husband, Richard Astle, her lip began to shake.

"I have some pictures," she said, handing him her digital camera. "There's just ashes."

Del Dios resident Cherrie La Porte was among the lucky. She knew that her house, which includes her glass-blowing studio, is still standing, though she is uncertain of the condition. Her new kitten, Rosita, has been a ray of hope in recent days, so much so that she is thinking of renaming her "Santa Ana."

"She's a feisty one," La Porte said.

Not everyone fled their home.

In Ramona, while many residents were still waiting to return, J.D. Dart sat on a friend's porch just down the street from his home. He didn't have to get past the police barricades because he never left.

When the fires started Saturday, the 46-year-old Dart took action. He and some friends rented water trucks, determined to protect their homes themselves if it came down to it. Evacuation orders started overnight Sunday, and Dart and his friends braced themselves for a fight.

Dart described it as hell.

One of his friends -- just returned from his third tour in Iraq -- told Dart, "It ain't that bad in Iraq."

In the end, five friends with three water trucks saved about a dozen homes.

"I just didn't want to see anybody lose their homes," he said.

Shelters empty out

Initially, more than a half-million people were under mandatory evacuation orders. Neighborhood by neighborhood, they began to return home.

For those still waiting, it led to frustration and angry confrontations with police, but officers said they had to block off neighborhoods until it was safe to return.

Nine of 49 shelters in hard-hit San Diego County closed Thursday, and 15,082 people remained in the remaining 40 shelters, said Alvarez with the county's Office of Emergency Services.

The evacuation center at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, which housed as many as 10,000 people a day, had about 750 people left on Thursday. The city planned to close the football stadium's evacuation center today and move the remaining people to shelters nearer their homes, said Fred Sainz, press secretary to Mayor Jerry Sanders.

San Diego was hit hard by the fires in the northeastern Rancho Bernardo area, where 360 structures were destroyed. As with many communities, a local assistance center opened to help victims Thursday afternoon.

"The city suffered mightily," Sainz said.

North of San Diego, sheriff's deputies found two burned bodies in a gutted home in an unincorporated area near Poway and Escondido. According to San Diego County emergency operations officials, they were a married couple identified as Victoria Katherine Fox, 55, and John Christopher Bain, 58, found in the rubble of their destroyed house. Another man, Thomas James Varshock, 52 of Tecate, also died on his property during the fire on Sunday.

Fires attacked by air

On Thursday, the lighter winds enabled firefighters to attack more from the air. In mountainous areas, winds were blowing at 10 to 15 mph, meteorologist Art Horton said. It was a big change from earlier in the week, when winds reached 70 to 80 mph at times, he said.

Light sea breezes were blowing in coastal areas, but they weren't strong enough to turn the direction of the fires, which had been a fear on Wednesday. Rain is nowhere in sight in Southern California.

"We're not looking for rains through the rest of the month, or even the following weekend," Horton said.

There were still nine fires burning Thursday in four counties: Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Diego and Orange. The number of firefighters from various agencies grew to 10,693, said Ramiro Rodriguez, public information officer for the state's Office of Emergency Services in Riverside.

The largest fire, the Witch fire in San Diego County, was only 30 percent contained Thursday evening and still threatened 1,000 residences, Rodriguez said. It has consumed close to 200,000 acres.

Alvarez said 5,000 fire personnel were fighting the blazes in San Diego County. He said nearly 60 aircraft of various types were battling from above.

"We're hoping to turn the tide soon," he said, "but some of the fires are still out of control."

Tougher codes limit losses

The acreage burned in this week's fires has exceeded the 273,246 acres scorched in the infamous 2003 Cedar fire in San Diego County. But the Cedar fire brought greater losses to life and property: 15 people died and 4,847 structures were destroyed.

Fire officials said a stronger focus in California in recent years on fire dangers and on improving preventative steps probably played a role in reducing the number of buildings destroyed this time around.

"We really are starting to address our building codes," Cal Fire's Berlant said. "We are seeing more emphasis on defensible space."

New state codes have extended the required clearance space between homes and wildland from 30 to 100 feet, Berlant said.

Berlant noted that Cal Fire moved 10 engines and three aircraft to Southern California last Friday night, based on weather information that indicated the Santa Ana winds were likely to kick up.

"We pre-positioned resources into the Southern California basin, knowing the conditions were ripe," he said. "That allowed us to work with law enforcement early to get homeowners out and out of the way."

The Santa Ana winds, however, blew harder and longer than officials expected, forcing aircraft to remain grounded intermittently in the first days, and requiring them to rescind the announced closure of fire season in Northern California in order to rehire more seasonal firefighters as backup.

Arson reward announced

The cause of the fires remained under investigation Thursday. Orange County authorities have determined that the Santiago fire, which burned 26,000 acres and destroyed 14 homes, was caused by arson.

The fire was only 30 percent contained Thursday evening, said Battalion Chief Kris Concepcion of the Orange County Fire Authority. A $150,000 reward was offered Thursday for information that will help identify the arsonist.

Smoke from the Southern California fires drifted all the way into the Sacramento region Thursday. Skies took on a brownish haze, but the smoke remained high enough that it did not affect air quality, said Brandon Manzano, assistant public information officer for the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District.

"Once the winds shifted, it kicked the smoke all the way up here," Manzano said. "But it's so high that it's not going to come down and hit our (air quality) monitors."

Air quality was considered "moderate" in the Sacramento region Thursday, according to the Sacramento Regional Air Quality Resource Web site.

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