Chula Vista city fire captain Jim Miller watches the head of the Harris Fire as it rages in the hills above San Diego’s Eastlake district Monday night. (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Firefighters take a stand as a wind-driven brush fire comes to the edge of a backyard in Poway Monday, Oct. 22, 2007. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
A Lake Arrowhead neighborhood, reduced to ash Monday afternoon, glows in the evening darkness. (Don Kelsen / Los Angeles Times)
Twelve firefighters are trapped atop a ridge off Santiago Canyon Road in Orange County after flames jumped the road. The blaze roared up the hillside and prompted the crew members to deploy their fire shelters. They were surrounded by burning brush, but they made it out alive. “We just remained calm, everyone did,” one firefighter said after he was checked out by paramedics. All of the firefighters were treated at the scene and did not want to go to the hospital. (Karen Tapia-Anderson / Los Angeles Times)
A San Diego firefighter tackles a house blaze in Rancho Bernardo. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
In northern San Diego County, evacuees found shelter at Escondido High School. (Lori Shepler / Los Angeles Times)
A plume of smoke from the Malibu fire drifts out over the Pacific Ocean. (Don Kelsen / Los Angeles Times)
A water dropping helicopter is dwarfed against a large plume of smoke advancing up the hillside in Malibu. (Don Kelsen / Los Angeles Times)
Corrections officer Chuck Toland removes an American flag from the entrance the Valley Oaks Mobile home park in Fallbrook. (Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)
Mariano and Marilyn Barcia, from the Escondido area, try to keep their lungs clear as they wait at Escondido High School. (Lori Shepler / Los Angeles Times)
The Witch Creek fire in San Diego County had grown to 10,000 acres. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Patients wait to be evacuated from Pomerado Hospital in Poway as a fire approaches. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
A San Diego Fire Department firefighter gasps for breath in the 3000 block of Lomas Serenas in Escondido, where homes were burning on both sides of the street. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles TImes)
Volunteer firefighters from Running Springs try to halt the spead of flames in Green Valley Lake, a community about 12 miles east of Lake Arrowhead. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Flames expose the framing of this house in Green Valley Lake. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Tracy and Bill Michaelis embrace outside the ruins of their home on Camp Plenty Road in Canyon Country. They said they watched on TV as it burned. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)
Linda Luger evacuates horses from the Jump for Joy Equestrian Center on San Francisquito Canyon Road in Saugus in the Santa Clarita Valley. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
Residents flee the fire near San Angelo and Pastora streets in Foothill Ranch, a community in southern Orange County. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
A man with a garden hose tries to wet down his yard before fleeing the Foothill Ranch area. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
Fire retardant is dropped onto the hills above Malibu as seen from Cold Canyon Road. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
A Halloween decoration is blown by the strong winds in the yard of a burned house in Rancho Bernardo. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Joyce Gossman of San Bernardino animal control leads a large dog to safety in Green Valley Lake. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
A home crumbles in Green Valley Lake. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
Redlands Fire Capt. Rob Sandberg fastens a hose clamp as crews try to save burning homes on Juniper Lane in Green Valley Lake. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Flames outline the roof of a house at the end of Juniper Lane in Green Valley Lake. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
A fire that started Monday afternoon in Stevenson Ranch threatened homes and sent smoke billowing around the Magic Mountain amusement park (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)
Crews forge their way through thick smoke in Las Flores Canyon in the Malibu area. (Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times)
A deck, with a telescope on it, goes up in flames near Grass Valley Lake, which is just west of Lake Arrowhead. (Robert Durell / Los Angeles Times)
Kristen Rivera,17, lower right, lifts some of the thousands of donated goods dropped off at Qualcomm Stadium for people displaced by the wildfires. (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)
A helicopter drops water on a blaze in the north end of Saugus in the Santa Clarita Valley. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
A young girl shields her eyes from smoke and ash after her family evacuated horses to Del Mar Fairgrounds because of fire. (Robert Lachman / Los Angeles Times)
Shervi Balhin stands outside the tent she set up with her family inside Qualcomm Stadium Monday evening. She was evacuated from Rancho Bernardo Monday morning. (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)
Fire races through Grass Valley Lake near Lake Arrowhead. (Carlos Chavez / Los Angeles Times)
Chris Branam, of San Dimas, views the giant plume of smoke from the fire in Stevenson Ranch. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tours the burned out Malibu Presbyterian Church with Sheriff Lee Baca, left, and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. (Annie Wells / Los Angeles Times)
The seventy horses at the Rocky Road Ranch in Hasley Canyon had nowhere to go as the Castaic Fire swept through. Although scared the horses were unharmed. (Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times)
Orange County Fire Authority personnel keep watch on the Santiago Canyon fire before dawn. (Don Kelsen / Los Angeles Times)
