diamond bar fire update

By Justin Pritchard
ASSOCIATED PRESS
10:59 a.m. November 16, 2008
BREA – Calmer winds Sunday aided firefighters battling wildfires that destroyed hundreds of homes in Southern California, forced thousands of residents to flee and left much of the region under a thick blanket of smoke.
Fires burned in Los Angeles County, to the east in Riverside and Orange counties, and to the northwest in Santa Barbara County. More than 800 houses, mobile homes and apartments were destroyed by fires that have burned more than 34 square miles since breaking out Thursday.
From today's U-T
Hot, dry weather expected to stay put Even areas far away from the flames were affected as poor air quality forced many to stay indoors. Organizers canceled a marathon in Pasadena where 8,000 runners had planned to participate.
Fierce Santa Ana winds that fanned the fires on Saturday weakened Sunday morning, allowing firefighters to set backfires to prevent flames from advancing to hillside neighborhoods.



The most threatening blaze had scorched 10,475 acres in Orange and Riverside counties after erupting Saturday and shooting through subdivisions entwined with wilderness parklands. By mid-day Sunday, multimillion-dollar homes were being threatened in Diamond Bar in Los Angeles County as the fire pushed north.
After midnight, the winds pushed flames dangerously close to a church and adjacent mobile home park in the Olinda Village area north of Yorba Linda but firefighters were able to beat it back. Only one mobile home was lost.
Billy Bagsby, an inmate firefighter with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said the flames suddenly shifted direction around 2 a.m.
“It was like the church was protecting itself,” Bagsby said.
The fire burned 119 homes in the communities of Corona, Yorba Linda and the Anaheim Hills area of Anaheim. In addition, 50 units of an apartment complex burned, Orange County fire spokeswoman Angela Garbiso said.
Apartment resident Melody Ma, 24, said she took her sister to piano lessons Saturday morning, when the fire's smoke appeared to be far away, then found she couldn't return home.
“There's things you can't replace like photos and stuff,” said Ma, bursting into tears in a shelter.
Capt. Leonard Grill, a 20-year veteran of the Riverside County Fire Department, watched for flaring embers in a Yorba Linda neighborhood late Saturday.
“It's gotten worse and worse every year. I can't keep track of them anymore,” Grill said of recent destructive wildfires. “These used to be the out-of-the-ordinary fires, once-in-a-career kind of fires. Now they're every year. “

Source:http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20081116-1059-ca-californiawildfires.html

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