California Sees Cooler Weather as Firefighters Make Gains

LOS ANGELES (AP) - California began cooling down Monday after a weekend of blistering heat that made conditions difficult for firefighters battling wildfires throughout the state.

The cooling trend will continue into the week, with onshore flow pushing moist ocean air inland, according to the National Weather Service offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Progress was reported on some of the state's active fires.

In Lake and Napa counties, a 39-square-mile blaze in Jerusalem Valley was 90 percent contained after destroying nine homes. Smoke drifted south to San Francisco Bay on Sunday, marring vistas.

The fire is the second of two blazes that have charred land near dry Lower Lake. The first one, which was contained Friday after more than two weeks, destroyed 43 homes.

On the Central Coast, 250 firefighters gained 5 percent containment of a 300-acre fire north of San Luis Obispo along the Cuesta Grade segment of U.S. 101. Fire crews aimed to keep flames out of the Santa Lucia Wilderness and protect communications towers and power lines.

In Southern California, crews working through the night stopped the spread of two Los Angeles County fires that erupted Sunday and together burned several structures, charred hundreds of acres of dry brush and led to the arson arrest of one person.

A brush fire near a riverbed in Montebello was 80 percent contained at 370 acres, and a 45-year-old man was under arrest on suspicion of arson.

To the north, a 300-acre Angeles National Forest fire that burned six buildings at an abandoned rehabilitation center near Castaic Lake was 50 percent contained.

Elsewhere in the same forest, a fire that broke out Friday in the San Gabriel Mountains north of suburban Glendora was 84 percent contained.