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Southern California's firestorm Thursday, Firefighters cut fire lines around the major
blazes in San Diego County, but none of the our fires was more than 40 percent
contained. More than 8,500 homes were still threatened.

To the northeast, in the San Bernardino County mountain resort of Lake Arrowhead,
fire 6,000 homes remained in the path of two wildfires  that had destroyed more than
300  homes  Both fires remained out of control, but were being bombarded
by aerial tankers and helicopters that dumped more than 30 loads of water.

president Bush in Southern California, the White House before leaving for California.
the people have got a lot of anguish in their hearts. They just need to know a lot of
folk about them.

Losses total at least $1 billion in San Diego County alone, nd include a third of the
states avocado crop. The losses are half as high as those in Southern California's
2003 fires, but are certain to rise. The more hopeful news on the fire lines came a
day after resident n some hard-hit San Diego County neighborhoods were allowed
back  to their street. with the wreckage of melted car.

Cheryl Monticello, 38 and eight months pregnant when she came back Wednesday
because a city official warned her the house was lost. But she had to see it for herself.
really need to see it to know for sure," Monticello said.

As nature's blitzkrieg starts to recede, many of the other refugees will be  allowed
back to their neighborhoods. More than 500,000 people were evacuated in San Diego
the largest mass evacuation in California history. 

The burn area of nearly 460,000 acres — about 719 square miles — stretches
n a broad arc from Ventura County north of Los Angeles east to the San Bernardino
National Forest and south to the U.S.-Mexico border.

In the middle of that arc, the Santiago Fire in Orange County had burned nearly 20,000
acres and destroyed nine homes. Only 50 percent contained, it is a suspected arson
fire.  Agents from the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
to heplp investigate fire in Riverside County also is linked to arson.

the fires have directly claimed just one life, 52-year-old Thomas Varshock of Tecate.
The San Diego medical examiner's office listed five other deaths as connected
to the blazes because all  died were evacuees.

"They learned how to get things done more quickly,"" Dooley said as he waited at a
roadblock to return home to San Diego's Rancho Bernardo area.

San Diego Wildfires: