California fire evacuees return home to a changed landscape

Los Angeles: Stunned, bedraggled evacuees began returning home on Monday to three areas of southern California ravaged by wildfires, some finding their homes and cars reduced to piles of smouldering, melted rubble.

The fires blazed on, though diminished winds and cooler temperatures helped keep them in check, and thick smoke hung over much of the area, stinging the eyes and making breathing difficult.

Weary firefighters still fought to contain fires in the foothills north of Los Angeles, in Orange County to the southeast and at the celebrity-studded enclave of Montecito near Santa Barbara.

Three fires have over the past five days destroyed around 1,000 homes and blackened 142 square kilometres across southern California.

Authorities said it would take several days to put out all of the fires but said the unpredictable winds remained a threat.

With most neighbourhoods seemingly out of danger and the fires driven into unpopulated areas, many of the estimated 50,000 evacuees were being allowed to return home.

Cadaver dogs pressed in

In Sylmar, residents of a mobile home park where some 500 homes were lost were given a tour of the devastation to see what, if anything, they had left. Search teams with cadaver dogs scoured the ruins looking for human remains.

No one was believed to have died in the complex. But because the area was evacuated in a hurry, and only about a quarter of the roughly 1,700 residents were officially accounted for, authorities were taking no chances. Those residents whose dwellings had been burned to the ground were shuttled to the site in buses, where they viewed the scorched ruins from inside the vehicles. Smaller groups of residents from about 100 homes left standing were given 10 minutes each to retrieve a bag or two of personal belongings. Most carried out a change of clothes, medications and other necessities while others retrieved more symbolic items.

Homeless man jailed

A homeless man has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison and ordered to pay more than $101 million for starting two fires, including one that burned more than 66,000 hectares in California two years ago.

Fifty-year-old Steven Emory Butcher was convicted in February of starting blazes in the Los Padres National Forest in 2002 and 2006. He was sentenced on Monday.

According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the 2006 fire raged for more than a month and cost more than $78 million to suppress. It injured 18 people, destroyed 11 structures and was the fifth-largest fire in California history. The 2002 blaze burned 28 hectares.

- AP