War Nearly Won, Crews Pull Out : Demobilization: Hundreds keep eye on hot spots in west county, while 1,500 stay on duty south of Thousand Oaks to mop up.

Wildfires that blackened 69,000 acres of Ventura County brush dimmed to embers Saturday and almost half the firefighters who had struggled all week to control them started heading home.

By nightfall, the Wheel fire near Ojai was fully contained, the Steckel fire near Santa Paula was virtually contained and the Green Meadow fire near Thousand Oaks was 90% contained, with full containment expected today.

Hundreds of firefighters watched hot spots in the west county, and another 1,500 stayed on duty south of Thousand Oaks to mop up and prepare for possible rekindling from forecast Santa Ana winds.

Most firefighters believed the worst was over, though. Nursing sooty lungs and brick-red sunburns, they crashed for their first good sleep in days.

And in the smoky wake of their week of flame, Ventura County residents had Saturday to shake off a mantle of ash and take stock.

It had been a good fight, fire commanders declared.

Now it was time to count the cost of the massive battle--which had topped $2.5 million by Saturday--and send fire crews home to rest for their next call.

“Now we’re looking at the chore of demobilization, and who’s going to pay for all this,” Ventura County Fire Chief George Lund said. “We’re really thankful we haven’t had any serious injuries.”

Fire commanders said they expect to cut forces at the Thousand Oaks scene from 2,700 to 1,500 by today.

They also hoped to dismiss some of the 1,190 firefighters who had been busy Saturday widening firebreaks near Santa Paula by cutting brush and lighting 1,500 acres of backfires that sent pillars of smoke rising into the sky over Ventura.

And they sent about half the 285 firefighters who had corralled the 1,650-acre fire in Los Padres National Forest home.

U.S. Forest Service officials said they are planning to begin repairing the damage to the environment. They will be replanting native vegetation in some of the worst-hit areas and examining how to salvage Chumash archeological sites that suffered some damage from bulldozers and hand crews.

“Even after the fires are going to be out, we’ll have plenty to do,” said Wayne Maynard of the Ventura County Fire Department, who was coordinating the stand-down. “Right now the priority is to get the local fire departments back so they can cover their stations.”

Officials predicted the Green Meadow fire south of Thousand Oaks--the largest in the state at 39,000 acres--could be fully contained by this morning.

The 26,500-acre Steckel fire between Santa Paula and Ventura was also well under control. On Saturday afternoon, the blaze briefly jumped fire lines at Sulphur Mountain Road and consumed about five acres before crews brought it back under control. The 1,190 firefighters working it at its peak had brought it to 90% containment by noon Saturday and full containment was predicted by 8 a.m. today.

And the Wheel fire in Wheeler Gorge in Los Padres National Forest near Ojai was stopped at 1,650 acres. By Saturday evening, a small force of a few more than 200 firefighters had it fully contained.

The Green Meadow command post at the Borchard Community Center had gone nearly overnight from a bustling battlefront refuge to a relaxed bivouac.

Firefighters sat on the lawn amid clusters of tents, shucking off their sooty yellow protective gear and swapping stories. One group kicked a Hacky-Sack, using their thick boots to knock the beanbag playfully around a circle on the grass.

Others lined up at a bank of free telephones, some cooing to their children hundreds of miles away and promising to return home soon.

Against their rigs slumped two exhausted Ventura County firefighters, who were among the first Tuesday to rush to the end of Green Meadow Avenue, where an arsonist ignited tinder-dry brush.

Four days of beard poked through their peeling, sunburned faces. Tired eyes squinted from pale, raccoon-like shadows left by the sunglasses or goggles they wore during the battle.

“Now that it’s almost over, I’m realizing that when you’re over 50 you might be too old for this kind of stuff,” said Howard Johnston, 53, of Fire Station 52 in Camarillo.

Sleep had come in 15- and 20-minute chunks as he followed the flames from the blazing brush off the 16th green of Los Robles Golf Course Tuesday across the rugged Santa Monica Mountains to the Malibu coast on Saturday. Now he awaited orders to go home.

Roger Simms, 45, is a member of truck company 30, based in Thousand Oaks. He was on the first team that rushed to the tiny fire just after 1:19 p.m. Tuesday--with only a chief’s truck and a ladder truck because the company’s pumper was in Simi Valley on training duty.

Without the capability to pump water onto the fire, Simms’ crew had attacked it with shovels, watching it grow from 100 feet square to several acres in the 10 minutes it took other engines to respond, he said.

“There’s not much you can do about fires like this, you’ve got to just see where they’re going and try to protect what’s in their way,” Simms said wearily. “All I’m feeling right now is like I’m ready to go home.”

“We’re beat and we’re tired,” said Larry Hadley, a firefighter from Los Gatos. “We came, we saw and we conquered. Now it’s time to go home.”

Mechanics at the command center for the Santa Paula fire at the Ventura County Fairgrounds in Ventura spent Saturday inspecting fire engines as part of demobilization. Each fire engine will be inspected before it is allowed to leave.

“If things continue to go as well as they have been going, some people should be going home (Sunday) morning,” said Carl Kent, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry.

Upon learning they might be sent home soon, firefighters from the Imperial Valley held out hope they would be assigned to another fire.

“This is what we do best,” said Engineer Mark Grundman, of the El Centro Fire Department. “This is what we get paid for.”

Meanwhile, burned-out homeowners trudged in to a makeshift claims center that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had set up at the Ventura County Sheriff’s Training Academy in Camarillo.

Their hands and faces blackened by ash, Hayden and Karen Clark came in wondering what to do after the fire poured over Boney Ridge late Wednesday and took everything they owned.

“We smelled the fire Wednesday afternoon,” Hayden Clark said, eyes wide in confusion. He turned and asked his wife, “Karen, was it Wednesday? No, yeah, it was. I’m sorry, I’ve lost track of the days.’

The pair lost a $100,000 mobile home and a guest house on the plot of land where they’d planned to build their dream home.

“We saved some clothes and pictures and our dogs,” he said. “We went back Friday and Saturday morning to sort through what was left,” but found only a foot-high pile of ash.

“I had a safe in the shed and all the money melted,” Karen Clark said, holding up a melted blob of silvery metal.

The Red Cross counted 50 families whose homes were either destroyed or damaged badly enough in the Ventura County fires to make them eligible for immediate assistance.

Elizabeth Allen, a FEMA disaster registrar, said she had worked on Hurricane Iniki, the midwest floods of 1993, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and the Los Angeles riot.

“Fires are very devastating because everything’s gone,” Allen said. “With a flood or earthquake or hurricane, usually something is saved. With a fire that’s usually not possible.”

Meanwhile, Ventura County arson investigators kept in touch with colleagues around Southern California, continuing their hunt for the arsonists.

“We’ve sucked in all of the arson kings from Southern California, and were interfacing with everybody who has resources that can help us,” county fire chief Lund said Saturday.

Lund said investigators are still looking into arson threat letters that were mailed to several departments, including his.

“We all agreed to keep it quiet,” Lund said of the letters, which were received last month. “We didn’t want to be alarmist about it. (The author) was obviously a very disturbed person. We didn’t want to treat it as a crank.”

Fire investigators are looking for a 30- to 40-year-old white woman they believe phoned in one of the first tips on the Green Meadow fire Tuesday afternoon.

They asked that the woman contact them at (805) 388-4269.