Firefighters Gain Ground in Battle Against L.A.’s Biggest Fire

Tanker aircraft and helicopters dumped water and retardant to quell the so-called Station Fire, which had destroyed 94 structures, killed two firefighters and left 6 people injured as of 8:30 p.m. yesterday, the U.S. Forest Service said on its Web site. The blaze was 28 percent contained, with 12,000 homes and other buildings still in its path.

All residential evacuations associated with the fire were lifted as firefighters shifted the blaze’s advance away from threatened residential areas by digging firebreaks and lighting backfires amid cooler temperatures and a second day of higher humidity.

“Don’t relax, because the fires are still out there blazing away,” Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said at a press conference at the Hansen Dam recreation center in Los Angeles yesterday. “But the firefighters are doing a great job.”

Fire personnel trudged through steep canyons, where flames devoured scrub oak, manzanita and other tinder-dry vegetation near campgrounds, hiking trails and recreation areas, as the blaze crept southeast to the mountains above the Los Angeles suburbs of Pasadena, Sierra Madre and Monrovia. The Stony Ridge Observatory also lay in the fire’s path.

The 140,150-acre (56,717 hectare) blaze was probably caused by a campfire, cigarette or other human activity, officials said.