Wildfires Die Down but Official Voices Fears

California’s long, hot weekend of fires that scorched watershed and destroyed property from one end of the state to the other appeared to be winding down Tuesday, but one official warned that the 1987 fire season could be the worst in the state’s history.

Department of Forestry and Fire Protection assistant director Maryn Pitt said the state’s short, dry winter season and scorching spring hot spells have reduced the moisture level of brush and trees to less than half the normal level for this time of year.

“It’s dry out there in the wild lands,” she said.

“To date . . . we have had 3,000 fires in our brush and forests--three times the number we had last year at this time--and the fire season normally doesn’t even begin until mid-June.”

Blackened brushland throughout the state and the gutted debris of homes in Monterey County gave stern emphasis to her words.

Teen-agers Blamed

In the wealthy golf-and-seascape community of Pebble Beach, the fire that broke out Sunday afternoon and raced from rooftop to rooftop at the urging of a 40-m.p.h. wind, destroying at least 31 dwellings and damaging six others, was still burning in spots Tuesday.

Residents were returning to the area, and firefighters said that the blaze was fully contained and that full control should be established overnight.

The Department of Forestry said the fire was started by beer-drinking teen-agers who built an illegal campfire in the Del Monte Forest and ran away when it got out of control.

In Southern California, firefighters controlled a blaze that had burned more than 1,000 acres of brushland in the Cajon Pass area of the San Bernardino National Forest and were cold-trailing the remains of one that blackened 200 acres of the Morongo Valley and another that charred 20 acres of brush at the mouth of Tahquitz Canyon on the southern boundary of Palm Springs.

A stubborn blaze continued to burn in a rugged canyon 15 miles northeast of Ojai in Los Padres National Forest, and U.S. Forest Service spokesman Earl Clayton said 270 firefighters were still on the line after achieving 95% containment.

Clayton said crews hoped to have the fire fully contained by early evening.

Still another blaze erupted shortly after noon on a dry hillside at Carbon Canyon Regional Park near Brea and swept across more than 135 acres of brushland before being contained on the Los Angeles-Orange County border.