2 dead, homes destroyed in Southern California wildfires

The charred remains of the burned out home are seen in Malibu, Calif., Saturday, Nov. 10, 2018. Officials took advantage of temporarily calm conditions Saturday to assess damage from the blaze that's burned 109 square miles outside downtown Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)

MALIBU, Calif. – Two people were found dead as a pair of wildfires stretched from inland canyons to the Pacific in Southern California on Saturday, leaving people sifting through the remains of both mansions and modest homes for anything they had left.

The two bodies were found severely burned inside a car on a long residential driveway in Malibu, Los Angeles County sheriff's Chief John Benedict said. The home is on a winding stretch of Mulholland Highway with steep panoramic views, where on Saturday the roadway was littered with rocks, a few large boulders and fallen power lines, some of them still on fire. Most of the surrounding structures were leveled.

The deaths brings to 25 the number of people killed in the state's wildfires in the past few days, with 23 found dead in a Northern California wildfire.

Firefighters have saved thousands of homes despite working in "extreme, tough fire conditions that they said they have never seen in their life," Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby said.

Those vicious conditions on Friday night gave way to calm Saturday, with winds reduced to breezes. No new growth was reported on the larger of the two fires, which stands at 109 square miles (282 square kilometers), and firefighters now have the blaze 5 percent contained.

Progress also came against the smaller fire, prompting Ventura County officials to allow people in a handful of communities to return to their homes.

Hundreds of thousands across the region remain under evacuation orders, and could stay that way for days as winds pick up again.

Osby said losses to homes were significant but did not say how many had burned. Officials said earlier that 150 houses had been destroyed and the number would rise.

Fire burned in famously ritzy coastal spots like Malibu , where Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian West, Guillermo del Toro and Martin Sheen were among those forced out of their homes amid a citywide evacuation order.

"It was way too big a firestorm," said Lani Netter, whose Malibu home was spared while her neighbor's burned. "We had tremendous, demonic winds is the only way I can put it."

The flames also burned inland through hills and canyons dotted with modest homes, reached into the corner of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, and stretched into suburbs like Thousand Oaks, a city of 130,000 people that just a few days ago saw 12 people killed in a mass shooting at a country music bar.

Wildfire raged on both sides of the city still in mourning, where about three-quarters of the population are under evacuation orders that officials urged them to heed.

"We've had a lot of tragedy in our community," said Ventura County Supervisor Linda Parks, whose district includes Thousand Oaks. "We don't want any more. We do not want any more lives lost."

Nothing was left but the horses for Arik Fultz, who spent Saturday sifting through the remains through the charred remains of his 40-acre ranch near Malibu.

"It just doesn't feel real that it's all gone," Fultz said. "Just yesterday, what, 24 hours ago I was feeding horses in the morning."

Two houses, two barns, three trailers and decades of accumulated possessions are gone.

All 52 horses survived, after a wild scramble to save them.

Fultz's mother, 61-year-old Tricia Fultz, said everyone expected the fire to stay well south of their property, but shifting winds forced them to take the horses out to open pastures as quickly as they could.

Three were still in their pens when the adjacent barn caught fire, and Tricia Fultz just had to open the pens, burning her hands and hoping for the best.

She, her husband and six others rode out the fire in a tunnel a short distance up the road as the fire burned the hillsides above and all around them.

"It's so surreal because it's so dark, and when we're in the tunnel you can't see anything," Tricia Fultz said. "There was so much burning and so much black."

The fire hopscotched around the Oak Park neighborhood of 70-year-old Bill Bengston, leaving most houses untouched.

The home for 22 years of Bengston and his wife, Ramona, was the only house on his block that burned. And it burned everything.

"It's all gone," he said softly as he sifted through the remains. "It's all gone."

The hardest to lose were the photos and the mementos handed down through the family — a cigar box that belonged to his great-grandfather; the handcuffs his father carried in World War II.

"We're somewhat devastated," Bengston said. "Still a little bit numb."

The area burning in Southern California is in severe drought, U.S. government analysts said. California emerged from a five-year statewide drought last year but has had a very dry 2018, pushing parts of the state back into drought and leaving others, like the area of the Northern California fire, abnormally dry.

___

Dalton reported from Los Angeles.