California Wildfires Trigger State of Emergency

Hundreds of thousands of people in California have been forced to flee their homes as fierce brush fires fueled by gusting winds continue to burn out of control.

The governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, declared a state of emergency and said it was a "tragic time" for the state. At least 250,000 people had been told to leave San Diego county alone, where hundreds of homes have been destroyed.

One firefighter described the scene as looking like a "nuclear winter". Conditions were expected to worsen today, as higher temperatures and continuing strong desert winds of up to 70mph fanned the flames across the tinder-dry region.

At least 655 homes have been destroyed so far and thousands more are under threat from the 14 major fires burning across the state.

The state of emergency opens the way for federal government assistance. The defense department is sending six water-dropping planes today to help with the effort.

At least one person, thought to be a migrant attempting to cross the border from Mexico, was killed in the fires.

A pair of wildfires consumed 128 homes in the mountain resort area of Lake Arrowhead, in the San Bernardino national forest east of Los Angeles. "We're stretched very thin and we can't get any planes up," said a forest spokesman, John Miller. State officials called in the National Guard.

Air quality plummeted as winds of up to 90mph deposited ash and soot across the area. Low brown clouds darkened the skies on what would have been a clear, sunny day.

Power lines brought down by the high winds were thought to be responsible for sparking the fires at the weekend, although fire officials blamed arsonists for some of the fiercest blazes in Orange county south of Los Angeles.

Local television stations turned their schedules over to cover the fires, with helicopter shots showing lines of fire snaking across the canyons that reach inland from the Pacific Ocean. The fires stretched from Tecate on the Mexican border to Santa Barbara county, almost 200 miles to the north. Some 16,200 hectares (40,000 acres) had been burned by yesterday morning, forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents and the closure of schools in several areas.

In Malibu, where 1,500 residents were evacuated, a church was destroyed by fire - as was a mock turreted "Scottish" castle, an ornate local landmark that was on the market for $17m (£8.3m). The owner, Lilly Lawrence, daughter of a former Iranian oil minister, took mementos from the property, including Elvis Presley's army fatigues. "My parents taught me not to allow my possessions to possess me," she told local TV. "So, that's the story. The house is a house."

News pictures showed some of the rich and famous of Malibu, including the film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, dousing their homes with fire retardant. The fierce winds, which calmed overnight on Sunday but picked up yesterday morning, carried burning embers across the Pacific Coast highway towards the exclusive beach front properties.

"We're at the mercy of the wind," Malibu's mayor, Pamela Conley Ulich, told reporters on Sunday night. Firefighters yesterday estimated that the blaze was only 10% contained.

The brush fires are an annual event in southern California, fueled by the Santa Ana desert winds. The Santa Ana's carry warm air from the desert to the coast, drying out the land as they pass and spreading the fires. Despite recent rains, southern California, like all of the western US, is experiencing a severe drought.

"This was a conflagration that we knew was coming at some point," the Los Angeles county supervisor, Zev Yaroslavsky, told reporters.