Devastating wildfires

A neighborhood in Lake Arrowhead is reduced to ash by Monday evening. A week after the Southern California blazes began, stubborn flames continue to threaten the area in San Bernardino County.  (Don Kelsen / Los Angeles Times)

Firefighter Jason Falarski battles to save a house in Poway on Monday. For many in San Diego County, the scene was reminiscent of the deadly 2003 Cedar fire. Several hundred thousand people evacuated their homes as wildfires flared across the county, but the size of the exodus made escape impossible for some.  (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

David Ottesen, 16, tries to douse embers before firefighters reach his and his parents’ property on Bent Tree Court in Poway on Monday. “They just went to town on every single flame that was in our backyard,” said David, a high school junior. “We probably wouldn’t have a house if they hadn’t come.”  (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Katie Borg, left, waits as her mother, Judy, right, and sister Kelsey pack their vehicle Wednesday in preparation to evacuate their home in Arrowbear, near Lake Arrowhead.  (Robert Durell / Los Angeles Times)

A firefighting helicopter passes over Amy Berling while she hoses the yard of a friend as flames approach the south Escondido home Tuesday afternoon.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Chuck Toland, a corrections officer, removes a flag from the entrance to Valley Oaks Mobile Ranch in Fallbrook on Monday. More than 200 homes, many of them at the mobile home park, have been destroyed in the Rice fire in northern San Diego County.  (Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)

A house burns on Circle View Drive in Running Springs near Lake Arrowhead as a firefighter talks on a two-way radio Tuesday. The wildfires destroyed about 300 homes around Lake Arrowhead.  (Richard Hartog / Los Angeles Times)

Firefighters battle a blaze that destroyed several homes in Green Valley Lake, near Lake Arrowhead, on Monday.  (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

A firefighter from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is dwarfed by flames along East Grade Road on Palomar Mountain early Wednesday. The fire was still raging Saturday and had burned 43,000 acres and destroyed nearly 80 homes.  (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Several homes are threatened as flames burn a hillside near Running Springs on Tuesday  (Robert Durell / Los Angeles Times)

A firefighter watches a backfire burn on East Grade Road on Palomar Mountain on Wednesday. The area remained under threat nearly a week after the Southern California firestorms began.  (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

The Grass Valley fire northwest of Lake Arrowhead has consumed more than 160 structures across more than 1,110 acres, including this neighborhood viewed Monday.  (Carlos Chavez / Los Angeles Times)

Several homes in this Rancho Bernardo neighborhood of San Diego were reduced to rubble Tuesday, while others escaped the fire unscathed.  (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

Tress Goodwin cries Thursday at memories lost and found in the house she grew up in on Aguamiel Road in the Rancho Bernardo area of San Diego. She holds a cup that belonged to her late grandmother.  (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times)

A girl shields her eyes from the smoke and ashes after her family evacuated horses Tuesday to the Del Mar Fairgrounds north of San Diego.  (Robert Lachman / Los Angeles Times)

Leo Calac passes an undamaged piece of Southwest Indian pottery to a helper as he sifts through the remains of his burned-down home Wednesday on the Rincon Reservation in San Diego County. Calac had lived in the house for 30 years.  (Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Jay Riordan holds a charred fragment of a family photo recovered Thursday from the ashes of his home in the Rancho Bernardo area of San Diego.  (Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times)

Tim and Susan Deehan embrace amid the ruins of their home overlooking Oak Canyon and Lake Poway in San Diego County on Thursday.  (Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times)