STATE BLAZES ENDANGER CONDOR HABITAT, SEQUOIAS.

Byline: Karyn Hunt Associated Press 

A group of historic homesteader cabins, a grove of ancient sequoias and a condor habitat in California were all threatened Wednesday as this year's feisty fire season continued to rage across the Western states.

A stubborn, 73,600-acre wildfire eating its way around Clear Lake, a popular vacation spot in Northern California, still threatened at least one community and was just 30 percent contained.

Firefighters eliminated the danger to homes and other structures in seven of eight communities located in the path of the 11-day-old Fork Fire by starving it of fuel between its front flanks and most of the buildings.

But the human-caused flames continued to move in other directions. And if the winds picked up in the afternoon, as they often do, one last stand of homes could be in trouble, said Mendocino National Forest spokeswoman LaVon Perez.

Many of the estimated 200 or 300 people evacuated from Clear Lake, 100 miles north of San Francisco, were allowed to return home Tuesday night. But some were told their houses are still in too much danger.

``Hopefully, if we have a good day today, we'll be able to let some of those other folks back in,'' Perez said Wednesday.

More than 4,000 firefighters from as far away as Alaska and Alabama - including 600 3rd Brigade combat soldiers from Colorado - worked mostly on the perimeter, clearing lines around the flames to prevent them from moving forward.

They couldn't do much about the burning inside because the terrain is too steep and dangerous. Attempts to douse the interior fell to the 20 helicopters and eight air tankers.

The weather was cooperating. Tuesday's and Wednesday's temperatures were lower and winds were calmer than over the weekend, when the fire flared out of control and more than tripled in size. It has burned one vacant home and a historic cabin.

Meanwhile, 200 miles southeast of San Francisco, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt donned a flameproof suit to sweat alongside firefighters battling the Kaweah Fire in Tulare County.

That 4,479-acre blaze started when three drivers pulled off the road and left their idling cars on top of some dry grass, which ignited. It has cost $3 million to fight and is threatening a stand of giant sequoias worth an estimated $140 million. It was nine miles from the historic General Sherman tree, one of the oldest and largest in the state at 275 feet tall and at least 3,000 years old.

``They don't make them like this anymore,'' said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Steve Weldon. ``It takes thousands of years to make them this big. These trees are gigantic.''

Elsewhere in California, flames sweeping through the Los Padres National Forest near San Luis Obispo had blackened 100,000 acres and burned a cabin where biologists kept an eye on 17 zoo-hatched condors. None of the birds or researchers was hurt because the structure was unoccupied at the time.

Rangers said that could benefit efforts to reintroduce wild condors to the landscape because the area's heavy brush usually hides their food and makes landing and taking off difficult.

The condors, which weigh up to 25 pounds and have a wingspan of nearly 9 feet, have been released to the wild for several years in a program to repopulate the nearly extinct species.

The blaze also has destroyed six homes, three mobile homes, three vehicles and 15 outbuildings, said Nena Portillo, a California Department of Forestry spokeswoman.

The cost of fighting the fire was expected to reach $7.5 million.

Fire crews worked setting backfires along the perimeter of the wildfire, which was burning in the Machesna Mountain Wilderness east of the San Luis Obispo County community of Santa Margarita.

Cooler temperatures and calm winds helped firefighters. Authorities expected it to be fully contained by 6 p.m. today.

Also in the Sierra Nevada, four separate lightning-ignited fires in and near Yosemite National Park continued to surround 22 turn-of-the-century homesteader canyons in Aspen Valley. They had burned a combined 42,682 acres. Three of them, the 19,482-acre Ackerson complex, were only 5 percent contained. The fourth, the 23,200-acre Rogge Fire, was 81 percent contained.