Firefighters were close Monday to corralling a wildfire that claimed four lives and 34 homes during its fierce run near Palm Springs in southern California, AP reported. The fire, which authorities believe was deliberately set, still threatened wilderness plagued by drought and filled with dead trees, but fire officials were confident they could get the blaze fully contained by Monday evening. «The weather has shifted in a very, very favorable way,» Capt. Don Camp, a California Department of Forestry spokesman, said early Monday. «The winds are mostly gone and we're getting an onshore flow that's keeping the temperatures down.» The favorable conditions helped the more than 2,000 firefighters contain 90 percent of the fire by Monday morning. Since it started early Thursday, the fire has burned 40,200 acres (16,270 hectares) northwest of Palm Springs. Authorities planned to reopen a highway and allow hundreds of people evacuated from the Twin Pines and Poppet Flat areas to return to their homes. Many were let back into the areas briefly on Sunday to collect belongings, retrieve necessary medicine and check on animals. «There's nothing left, just a couple of walls and rubble,» said Oscar Pineiro, 52, who returned to Twin Pines with his wife to find their home in ruins. Camp said it was unclear when some burned-out neighborhoods would be inhabitable. «Our goal is to get people back in their homes as quickly as possible, but until we're sure that it's safe, people are unfortunately going to be displaced,» he said. Fire officials were still concerned with the southeastern flank of the blaze, which borders a wilderness area that has not burned in more than 30 years and has been devastated by a bark beetle infestation that has killed hundreds of trees.
