YUCAIPA, Calif. (AP) -- Dry grass fueled a fire that rapidly burned about 160 acres just north of a housing tract Thursday, but no homes or structures were damaged, officials said.
The blaze in this San Bernardino County hillside community, about 75 miles east of Los Angeles, was sparked by mechanical equipment cutting metal pipe, California Department of Forestry spokesman Bill Peters said.
''That grass is so dry, it's burning right up the hills,'' Peters said.
Fire crews had the fire about 75 percent contained, said Glenn Barley, another forestry department spokesman.
Another fire that burned 100 acres of brush on a coastal hillside of Rancho Palos Verdes, 25 miles south of downtown Los Angeles, was contained Thursday.
The wind-driven blaze had raced toward as many as 300 multimillion-dollar homes overlooking the Pacific Ocean on Wednesday until firefighters were able to stop it.
In Arizona, flames from an 11,375-acre wildfire were within a mile of the Mount Hopkins observatories and some summer homes and lodges in a canyon popular for hiking, picnicking and bird-watching.
Fire officials were optimistic that the structures could be saved. People living in about 30 summer homes and lodges were evacuated Wednesday as a precaution.
Hundreds of firefighters worked Thursday to control a blaze that has burned at least 10,000 acres of sagebrush and timber on the Colville Indian reservation in Washington state.
In South Dakota, fire officials said they had laregely contained a fire that burned nearly 4,000 acres in the northern Black Hills.
