Winds Drive California Fires

INVERNESS, Calif.--Thousands of firefighters battled to hold the line yesterday against a wind-driven wildfire that threatened the town of Inverness about 25 miles north of San Francisco.

The blaze, which destroyed 40 homes within hours of rising from the embers of an illegal campfire on Tuesday, scorched 11,100 tinder-dry acres within two days, most within the Point Reyes National Seashore.

Almost 2,000 firefighters worked the fire, and helicopters dumped water on homes and brush along a ridge to keep the flames from descending into the 1,000-resident town. A spot fire started by a wind-borne spark burned within five acres of Inverness early yesterday.

The fire was 60 percent contained by midday and officials hoped to have it fully contained tomorrow. Wind gusts of 40 mph that drove the flames carlier had died down.

"Everything appears to be going pretty good," said California Department of Forestry firefighter Eric Johnson. "The humidity is up, the wind is good, things have changed for the better."

That didn't reassure J.B. Blunk, a 69-year-old sculptor whose home was at the center of the ridge battle, with backfire flames only feet from his porch. He shouted vainly at the helicopters to dump their water buckets on his home.

Blunk had evacuated Tuesday, then returned only to wake up Thursday about 2 a.m. to the sounds of the fire.

"I got up and looked out. These big pines across the way were exploding," he said. "Then it was going around the house, and I just said, "This is it,' so I literally said goodbye to the house and grabbed a few things and left."

"These guys saved the house," he said, pointing to the firefighters after returning home later in the day.

One of the unlucky homeowners was attorney Phil Decker, who surveyed the charred ruins of his home with an insurance adjuster, and joked about usually being a tidier housekeeper.

"What are you going do, cry? I shed my tears already," he said. "No people were injured No people were killed. The rest is just stuff."

The fire drove more than 200 people from their homes in a nearby development where at least 47 buildings were destroyed and another 12, mostly houses, were damaged.

North of Point Reyes in the rugged coastal mountains of Mendocino County, 930 firefighters and 50 engines tried to keep a 2,000-acre wildfire from a string of subdivisions in the Ukiah Valley, home to 30,000 people.

In Southern California, a wildfire racing across more than 800 acres burned two outlying buildings and sped toward a subdivision in north Los Angeles County as hot, dry Santa Ana winds buffeted the region.