Declaring victory over firestorms that ravaged many Southern California mountain communities for the last 10 days, officials were sending weary firefighters home today, saying the blazes were all but extinguished.
The talk among firefighting and emergency management agencies turned from battling the wildfires that charred almost 750,000 acres (300,000 hectare) and destroyed nearly 3,400 homes to helping the victims with financial aid to rebuild and restart their shattered lives.
Firefighters shared the credit for putting an end to the devastating fires with Mother Nature, who drenched the flames on Saturday with heavy rains, snow and near freezing temperatures -- conditions that were due to continue for the next few days.
"This is the day we didn't believe we would ever see," said Ms Andrea Tuttle, director of the California Department of Forestry. "We don't have any more hot flames anywhere." Looking back on the disaster, Ms Tuttle said, "The real story is the hundreds of thousands of structures saved." She added there were still some smoldering spots, such as burning logs and soil, but fire crews were cleaning those up.
Outgoing California Governor Gray Davis, who met fire evacuees at a disaster relief center in Claremont, east of Los Angeles, with Homeland Security Secretary Mr Tom Ridge, said he had asked that the federal government shoulder more than the usual 75 per cent cost of disaster emergency relief funds.
California, strapped with a potential $10 billion budget gap for 2004, can ill afford the fire bill, which has been estimated by various state officials at between $2 billion and $12 billion.