Los Angeles, Oct 30: Firefighters were waging a desperate battle to save entire California towns, as the worst blazes in its history spread, overrunning an area the size of a small US state.
Nearly 13,000 exhausted firefighters were making defiant stands around mountain resort towns in San Bernardino county, east of Los Angeles and around historic communities near the southern city of San Diego.
Seventeen infernos have scorched more than 2,46,400 hectares of tinder-dry brush and forest, destroying 2,125 homes, killing at least 18 people and costing around two billion dollars, the Governor's Office of Emergency Services (OES) told reporters yesterday.
More than 1,00,000 people are believed to have fled their homes in the face of the walls of flames, relief workers said, but no accurate figures were available due to the rapid and erratic spread of the fires.
"This may be the worst fire disaster that the state has ever experienced," said outgoing Governor Gray Davis after touring one of the key disaster areas in San Bernardino county.



"We have more acres burned now than the entire state of Rhode Island," he said adding that the three worst fires of the 17 raging across Southern California were "nowhere near containment."


Bureau Report