Authorities have reported 13 more fatalities from a blaze in Northern California that destroyed a town, bringing the total death toll so far to 42 and making it the deadliest wildfire in recorded state history.
The search for bodies was continuing.
Hundreds of people were unaccounted for by the sheriff's reckoning, four days after the fire swept over the town of 27,000 with flames so fierce that authorities brought in a mobile DNA lab and forensic anthropologists to help identify the dead.
The statewide death toll from wildfires over the past week has reached 44.
A 1933 blaze in Griffith Park in Los Angeles killed 29 people, and a series of wildfires in Northern California's wine country last fall killed 44 people.
Fire officials lifted some evacuation orders Monday while warning Southern California residents to remain vigilant as strong winds fanned new fires.
While some returned home, others were told to leave. As one major freeway reopened, another was closed.
The return to normal for some was juxtaposed with the arrival of chaos for others, illustrating how quickly conditions can turn when erratic Santa Ana winds meet a spark in tinder-dry brush.
At least two people have been killed and 370 homes have been destroyed in the fires that erupted last week west of downtown Los Angeles. It is likely that crews assessing damage will discover hundreds more homes lost in the canyons and steep hillsides in inland and coastal areas, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby said.
More than 200,000 people were still under evacuation orders even as some residents were allowed to return to inland communities of Agoura Hills, Westlake Village and Newbury Park.
Osby emphasized that about 57,000 homes have been saved from the so-called Woolsey fire, which burned a path about 20 miles (32km) long and 14 miles (22.5km) wide – from north-west of Los Angeles through suburbs and the Santa Monica Mountains to the Malibu coast.
Officials reopened US Highway 101 late Sunday to allow people to get into neighborhoods that had been threatened by fire, marking positive developments even though gusty, dry winds returned and fanned new fires.
New fires erupted in the rugged Rocky Peak area along State Route 118 near Simi Valley and in suburban Thousand Oaks, where residents had been evacuated last week from a different fire the day after a gunman killed 12 people at a country music bar in the city.
Firefighters and water-dropping aircraft quickly corralled the new flames. But fire officials said the new outbreaks showed the risk of more fire remained high and the public should be alert and not wait for an order to evacuate if fire is nearby.
"I've been doing this job for 31 years and probably in the last five, maybe seven years, every year seems to get worse," California Fire Chief Scott Jalbert said.
Containment of the Woolsey fire was estimated at just 20 per cent but despite the wind there were no big flare-ups and blue sky replaced the massive smoke plumes of previous days.
Surviving Malibu mansions stood in stark contrast to an utterly blackened landscape littered with charred cars, chimneys left standing and downed powerlines.