Losses Climb as Fires Still Burn : 600 Homes Hit; Crews Contain Some Blazes : Inferno: Weary firefighters still battling in Laguna Beach, Altadena. President declares disaster area. Injuries rise to 59.

Devastating brush fires continued to scorch hillsides in Laguna Beach, Altadena and other dry corners of the Southland on Thursday, touching off troublesome new blazes even as firefighters managed to bring the worst of the infernos into partial containment. Total losses climbed to nearly 600 homes damaged or destroyed and more than 115,000 acres burned, authorities said.

Weary firefighters seemed to be winning the battle to save hundreds of threatened homes in some areas, but late-afternoon sea breezes droves flames into residential parts of Ventura County, where other homes burned.

No deaths were reported in any of the 14 major fires that engulfed the region, but the injury total climbed to 59, including firefighters. President Clinton declared a federal disaster area to help speed reconstruction efforts. Meanwhile, relief agencies continued to organize shelters for an estimated 25,000 people left homeless, and law enforcement agencies pressed their investigations into fires believed set by arsonists.

In major developments:

* More than 1,000 firefighters working overnight managed to contain the fire that roared through the hill-shrouded resort town of Laguna Beach on Wednesday, destroying 300 homes and causing the evacuation of the city’s 24,000 residents. Residents began returning to their homes or smoldering lots, and Marines began picking through rubble to look for possible fatalities.

* The fire that destroyed 115 homes in Altadena and Sierra Madre, forcing the evacuation of more than 2,000 residents, continued to burn out of control after blackening more than 5,000 acres, but officials said the blaze posed no immediate threat to any more homes.

* Near Thousand Oaks, a two-day-old fire that had consumed 33,000 acres of brush and destroyed 33 homes began to race eastward through Carlisle Canyon, pushing toward the exclusive community of Lake Sherwood and setting two homes ablaze on Stafford Road. Residents of those two communities were being evacuated, along with those in the dense subdivisions of western Westlake Village.

* In Riverside County, two fires that had burned 6,000 acres of brushland were declared fully contained, and a third blaze was brought largely under control.

* Slackening breezes and cooler overnight temperatures helped firefighters gain an upper hand on some of the most serious fires, but weather forecasters predicted a return of dry, warm, 20- to 40-m.p.h. winds today, raising fears that flames might be fanned anew.

“If the fires aren’t fully contained by Friday night, the embers will begin blowing again,” said Weatherdata Inc. forecaster James McCutcheon. Although winds were expected to be less severe than those that fanned flames on Wednesday, gusts again could reach speeds of 60 and 70 m.p.h. below some canyons, McCutcheon said.

Today’s temperatures are expected to reach the upper 70s to the upper 80s.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who took a 2 1/2-hour helicopter tour of charred communities, said he was nearly brought to tears when he stopped to visit Los Angeles city firefighters who were severely injured Wednesday. During the visit, Firefighter Cleveland Tipton assured the mayor that he was prepared to go back to the fire lines, despite his injuries.

“The spirit that these men (showed) and the fact we saved all those homes shows me we have a great Fire Department and incredible esprit de corps,” Riordan said.

Orange County

Government officials gathered Thursday morning at Laguna’s Main Beach to watch fire helicopters lift off from the sand into smoke-filled skies, battling the region’s most serious blaze in a scene reminiscent of the movie “Apocalypse Now.” Absent was Laguna Beach City Councilman Bob Gentry, whose home and a rental property had been destroyed by fire. City Manager Kenneth Frank, who also lost a home on Sky Line Drive, tried to concentrate his attention on getting officials onto tour buses.

“This is unbelievable,” Councilwoman Ann Christoph remarked.

Firefighters had reached a turning point in battling the fire about midnight Wednesday, thanks largely to a cool marine layer that brought moisture and decreasing winds to the picturesque seaside enclave, an Orange County Fire Department spokesman said.

Laguna Beach police placed the damage toll at 330 homes lost or partially destroyed in Emerald Bay, Canyon Acres, the Mystic Lane-Skyline Drive area and the El Morro mobile home park. About 1,400 firefighters were still working the fire and another 1,000 were en route to the scene, authorities said.

Throughout the night, Laguna residents bedded down in emergency shelters, jammed the Ritz-Calton Hotel in Laguna Niguel and flouted evacuation orders to stay at home and douse their roofs with garden hoses. One man, Julian Wilson, left Laguna on Wednesday morning to try to save his ranch near Temecula, where a brush fire near California 79 destroyed more than 100 acres.

That property was spared, but Wilson returned home late Wednesday night to find that his Laguna home was destroyed.

“It’s been just one long day,” Wilson said. “And I think it’s going to get a lot longer.”

The fire caused overnight power outages and sporadic explosions as the flames reached fuel storage tanks scattered on the hillsides. Mike Helin of Emerald Bay was one of scores of residents who ignored the evacuation to try to save his expensive estate. After leaving work Wednesday, he bypassed police officers who tried to keep him out of the burning community and arrived home to find the roof on fire.

Helin put out the flames with a garden hose and labored through the night. At dawn, he limped away on a twisted knee to survey the hillsides and point to the smoldering homes of his neighbors. The inferno had claimed the house next door, the homes across the street and those around the corner.

But Helin’s own stood intact.

Bob and Myra Teters, who live on Temple Hill Drive, were two others who risked their lives to stay put in a $750,000 residence they have owned for 18 years.

“It’s our home,” Bob Teters explained, recalling the terror of seeing gas mains exploding through the night as they stood ready to douse stray sparks. “All these embers were going up. You just see these huge bursts of flames.”

By midnight, their home seemed out of danger. But Sandra Longnecker, another resident of Temple Hill Drive, was not so fortunate. She evacuated before sundown Wednesday and returned Thursday morning to the smoky wreckage of what once was a $1.6-million home.

With ash still falling early Thursday, she found that only the foundation, brick entryways and four chimneys remained, along with a burnt set of box springs and a charred statuette.

The hand-tiled pool was scorched and her 1953 MG sports car was burned and crushed by debris.

“There were embers falling everywhere,” she said after leaving the home, which she had remodeled twice at a cost of $350,000. “I guess we’ll see what we do from here,” she said. “I think we’ll try to stay here. This is where I want to be.”

Orange County Fire Capt. Dan Young, who was stationed at the disaster command post at Main Beach, said the county Fire Department tried to do a controlled burn in the area near Emerald Bay three to four years ago in an effort to reduce the amount of dried brush and combustible material--a common tactic to reduce the threat of fire.

But the burn was never done because of concerns about air quality, wildlife habitat, the weather and other factors, Young said.

“It could have made a difference in this fire,” he said. “It could have stopped it.”

Meanwhile, a group of 112 Marines gathered outside Laguna Beach’s Pageant of the Masters theater in the early morning, waiting for the ground to cool enough to begin a search for bodies.

Although no one was reported missing, the routine search was expected to be difficult.

“There is a problem,” Orange County Sheriff’s Capt. Ed Herndrie told the troops as he trained them in how to look for remains. “A burned-out human does not look like a human.”

The fire had swept through blocks of homes at temperatures exceeding 2,000 degrees, noted Orange County Chief Deputy Coroner Jim Beisner. That is hotter than a crematory. If there are any fatalities, he said, “the best we’re going to find is perhaps some bones or perhaps some bodies that are under something that has fallen.”

As of early evening, the search had yielded nothing.

But elsewhere in Orange County, fire damage escalated.

An 8,000-acre blaze near the Ortega Highway in the south county remained out of control, in part because firefighters had been giving priority to other blazes in more heavily populated areas.

By 1 p.m. Thursday, the Ortega fire had charred 8,000 acres in the Cleveland National Forest and had burned 15 homes, said Norm Machado of the National Forest Service. About 200 firefighters were battling the blaze, which was “zero percent contained,” Machado said. Because of difficult terrain, firefighting efforts were limited to aircraft, another Forest Service official said.

The fire was encroaching on the upscale community of Coto de Caza, but no homes had burned there and none was considered seriously threatened. Some residents of Coto de Caza and nearby Trabuco Canyon were voluntarily evacuating.

Altadena-Sierra Madre

A day after a dawn blaze broke out in Eaton Canyon, destroying 115 homes in the foothills north of Pasadena, the fire continued to move slowly up the steep mountainsides, pushing ever deeper into the heavy chaparral and timber of Angeles National Forest.

Capt. Steve Valenzuela of the Los Angeles County Fire Department said about 1,000 firefighters manning the lines had managed to contain about 20% of the blaze, but there was no estimate when more complete containment would be achieved. No additional homes were threatened.

Big Marine helicopters taking off from a staging area near the Rose Bowl in Pasadena were being used to drop fire-retardant chemicals on hot spots.

Firefighters who came down the mountains to the command post said the fire was dying down but still fierce.

“It reminded me of the riots,” said Firefighter Herb Marroquin, 27. “Everywhere you look, there’s nothing but fire and devastation.”

At the command post, volunteers from Robin’s restaurant in Pasadena manned an outdoor grill, serving up 600 half-pound burgers, 200 Polish sausages, 1,200 scrambled eggs, 50 pounds of bacon and 200 pounds of hashed browns. Owner Robin Salzer, 40, said many of the firefighters and law enforcement officials assigned to the disaster were regulars at his restaurant, so he wanted to do what he could to help.

“With all these trials and everything and the adversity, this is the time people can come out to help,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do.”

Meanwhile, as residents of the fire-ravaged Kinneloa Canyon area began returning to salvage what they could from their devastated homes, Pasadena police and sheriff’s deputies patrolled the area to prevent looting. By noon Wednesday, at least one suspected looter had been arrested.

Gerry and Sal Bonaccorso came home to the canyon from a trip in Mexico to find the house Sal had built with his own hands gone and his Jaguar burnt to a crisp in the driveway, alongside the smoking hulk of their son’s truck.

The county Fire Department had already affixed red and white tags to the mailboxes of razed homes in their neighborhood reading condemned.

By mid-morning Gerry Bonaccorso had found only two items in the ashes her home--a crucifix and a statue of the Virgin Mary.

Gerrie Kilburn watched disconsolately as her husband, clad overalls and wielding a pitchfork, poked through the rubble of what once had been their comfortable home. On Thursday, nothing was left standing but their brick fireplace and chimney.

She said that when she fled the flames Wednesday morning, she had to leave everything behind--her silverware, her family pictures and a collection of antiques that included a 15th-Century letter press.

Only two things made it to safety--”me and the cat--that was it,” she said.

She gazed at the destruction around her.

“A lifetime of living,” she said softly.

Andres Z. Huang, 35, the transient Chinese immigrant accused of accidentally starting the Altadena blaze early Wednesday morning, told detectives he had built a campfire in the brush-covered hills because he was chilly, according to Deputy Gabe Ramirez of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

“Then he got scared and fled when the flames began to spread,” Ramirez said.

Huang was arrested about 4 p.m. Wednesday near the ranger station at Henniger Flats.

“He was disoriented and confused,” said Deputy Irma Becerra.

Huang will be arraigned today on felony charges of recklessly starting a fire.

He was being held in lieu of $7,500 bail in the jail ward of County-USC Medical Center, where he was being treated for cuts and bruises suffered when he tumbled down a hillside before his arrest.

Ventura County

Three fires continued to burn out of control in and around Ventura County.

Fanned by stiffening sea breezes, the two-day-old Thousand Oaks blaze, which already had consumed 33,111 acres of brush and destroyed 33 homes, began to race eastward through Carlisle Canyon, pushing toward the exclusive community of Lake Sherwood and setting two homes ablaze on Stafford Road.

About 60 Carlisle Canyon residents were evacuated, but at least six refused to leave, insisting they had cleared enough brush from around their property to make it safe to stay and help defend their homes.

A young panther and a lioness at the Animal Actors of Hollywood ranch on Carlisle Canyon Road had to be shot because they were too mean to be moved safely, fire officials said.

Three 14-man California Youth Authority inmate crews cut firebreaks through dense brush with chain saws and axes, while other firefighters lit backfires during a lull in the winds to deprive the fire of fuel that could help it jump to houses.

Los Angeles County Battalion Chief Mike Balzano said the fire was threatening rugged, densely populated hillside neighborhoods along Mulholland Highway.

Back in the burned areas along Deer Canyon and Yerba Buena Road, neighborhoods were eerily quiet as a wet ocean breeze washing over the rubble of homes that had burned the day before. Their owners were nowhere to be seen.

Overnight, three homes on the ranch of Donald Scott--the millionaire who was fatally shot by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies a year ago during a fruitless drug raid on his house--had gone up in flames.

Three chimneys partially built with stones from a nearby creek were all that stood after the fire burned through the Mulholland Drive site.

“It reminds me of the Alamo in Texas,” said Scott’s widow, Frances Plante Scott. “I feel like the last one standing in the Alamo fighting.”

John Gutierrez, 33, was another who felt it important to stand his ground.

“I made it through the last one--the fire in 1989,” said Gutierrez, 33, a resident of Decker Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains. I’m not leaving. . . .

“What are your choices? L.A.? The city? Hell no. You take your chance every few years here. It’s the quality of life.”

Father west, bulldozer crews had spent the night cutting lines around the fire to block its march toward Camarillo State Hospital, but flames came close. About 60 emotionally disturbed youths were moved temporarily to a less-threatened wing of the huge facility on farmland north of Pt. Mugu.

Meanwhile, the stubborn Santa Paula blaze continued to rage out of control after charring more than 20,000 acres of chaparral on the rugged hillsides north and west of town.

The city of Ventura awoke beneath a dense shroud of brown smoke and a constant rain of fine ash from the Santa Paula blaze, but fire crews managed to stop the fire from sweeping south into Ventura and were able to block the flames’ advance at the outskirts of Santa Paula.

To the north, a fire in Ojai had burned 1,650 acres of brush around Wheeler Hot Springs resort and into Matilija Canyon residents’ back yards by dusk on Thursday, but there were no reports of structural damage.

The Ojai fire, which began just off California 33 about one-quarter mile west of the resort, may have been started by an arsonist, fire officials said. It was only 10% contained by midafternoon, and firefighters made no predictions as to when it would be fully contained.

Overnight, only a single helicopter had been available to dump water on the Ojai fire, but air tankers finally arrived Thursday to begin dumping pink clouds of fire retardant into the fire’s path.

“The only reason we’re getting more support now is the threat to the Matilija Canyon residents and the potential threat to Oak View and Meiners Oaks,” said Charlie Johnson, a public information officer for the U.S. Forest Service.”

The Simi Valley-Chatsworth fire, which severely burned four city of Los Angeles firefighters Wednesday when it engulfed their fire truck near the Ventura County-Los Angeles County line, was thought to have been fully controlled by noon Thursday after blackening about 1,500 acres. But a small flare-up was reported at nightfall.

Riverside County

Three fires that had raged Wednesday in largely uninhabited portions of the county were brought fully or partially under control.

The 3,500-acre Box Springs fire, which broke out north of Moreno Valley in the city of Riverside, had been 100% contained by Thursday afternoon, according to Ray Shultz, a spokesman for the state Department of Forestry. The same was true of the so-called Tribal fire, which had consumed 2,500 acres of the Cahuilla Indian Reservation near California 371, Shultz said.

The third blaze, which had burned 500 acres near California 79 and the city of Temecula, was 75% contained by midafternoon, with full containment expected late Thursday night. That fire burned within a few hundred yards of several wineries in the Temecula area, but none were damaged, officials said.