MORONGO VALLEY, Calif. (AP) -- Firefighters gained ground Thursday on a wildfire that destroyed six houses and chased residents from a remote Mojave Desert community.
Southern California's first major wildfire of the summer was downgraded to 3,022 acres from an estimate of 6,200 acres after new mapping, said Bill Peters, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in San Bernardino County.
The blaze was 30 percent contained and full containment was expected Friday. About 700 firefighters were on the lines.
''They made good progress last night and they made good progress this morning. And the reason we have is because of the weather conditions,'' said Gil Portillo, a CDF spokesman. ''Depending how the winds behave today, we'll know whether we can keep it up.''
There were no new structural losses beyond the six homes and one unidentified structure that burned Wednesday. About 200 homes were still categorized as threatened because they were within the fire area but they were not in immediate danger.
A second fire, about 35 miles away, blackened more than 2,000 acres but didn't threaten any structures, authorities said.
The Morongo Valley blaze, named the Paradise Fire, started as a house fire about 1 p.m. Wednesday, and those flames quickly spread into the nearby desert brush and tall field grass.
Pushed by desert winds, the flames hopscotched up and down brush-covered hillsides and through canyons in the area about 100 miles east of Los Angeles. It threatened as many as 700 homes for a time. Hundreds of people fled their homes, some with nothing, others with just a handful of possessions.
As her husband, Tom, hosed down their house, Ann Lee said she grabbed their birth certificates and medicines and rounded up their six cats. Then she turned to him and said, ''Let's get out of here because even if the fire takes everything we own, I don't plan on dying here.''
The couple, who headed to an evacuation center in Yucca Valley, about 10 miles away, had no idea if their home had been spared.
''I'm worried, but it's not going to do me any good throwing a fit or crying,'' said Lee, 46. ''It's in God's hands.''
The fire spread into the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve, a sparsely populated wilderness area but one thick with dry brush and other fuel, and into Joshua Tree National Park, home to the famous spiky plants.
Highway 62, which was shut down at both ends of the unincorporated Morongo Valley on Wednesday, reopened about 6 a.m. Thursday and people were returning to their homes.
Among the homes destroyed was a trailer that Julie Brunette shared with her husband on a horse ranch.
''We pretty much lost everything,'' Brunette said. ''Most everything we had wasn't very valuable but it was memory stuff, pictures of our grandkids.''
Wednesday's weather conditions -- sustained winds of about 10 mph -- helped spread the fire rapidly.
Staffers at Sharon's Playhouse Child Care drove two carloads of children to a safe rendezvous point where they were turned over to their worried parents.
''I let them know that we were in no danger,'' said Sharon Aiken, the center's owner.
Gene Rotstein, owner of Morongo Hardware, sought refuge at his hardware store with his wife, Leslie, and their dogs. They didn't know their home's fate.
''The last I saw as I was evacuated, it was burning the house above mine, about 50 feet away,'' Rotstein, 67, said of the fire.
He said he and his wife were ''bombed'' with fire retardant dropped by helicopters as they scrambled to safety.
In neighboring Riverside County, a fire burning in the San Jacinto area had blackened more than 2,000 acres after breaking out early Wednesday afternoon.
About 1,000 firefighters aided by aircraft and bulldozers were carving fire lines and no homes were immediately threatened, said Cassandra Burleson of the Riverside County Fire Department-California Department of Forestry.
