Around 1,700 buildings have been destroyed in the 18 fires that have erupted since Sunday, forcing an estimated 500,000 people to flee their homes and scorching 172,000 hectares (426,000 acres) of tinder-dry countryside stretching from celebrity-studded Malibu to beyond the Mexican border.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said three people had died and 40 people had been injured in the fires, the worst to hit California since devastating 2003 blazes which claimed 22 lives.

The fast-spreading infernos have been fueled by powerful desert winds gusting across the region, making conditions hazardous for thousands of exhausted firefighters who have tackled the flames relentlessly.

So far 1,664 structures, including 1,436 homes, have been destroyed while a further 25,000 buildings remained threatened, Schwarzenegger added.

A respite from the winds forecast to continue through the remainder of the week enabled firefighters on Wednesday to make great strides in containing three of the five biggest blazes.

"The wind stopped blowing and that made our lives a lot easier," said a Los Angeles County Fire Department official tackling the Buckweed fire, which charred 15,000 hectares before being 100 percent contained late Wednesday.

But the two biggest California fires, covering around 108,000 hectares of San Diego County, were both only 10 percent contained.

President George W. Bush formally declared the region a disaster zone, paving the way for federal funds to boost the relief effort.

"Today I've signed a major disaster declaration which will then enable federal funds to start heading towards the families who have been affected by these fires," said Bush, who is to tour California on Thursday.

Some 8,900 firefighters -- including 2,600 prison inmates trained to tackle fires -- are battling the flames supported by 90 firefighting aircraft, including a DC-10, 25 air tankers and 40 helicopters.

Schwarzenegger, who described the destruction as "terrible and tragic," paid tribute to the weary firefighters.

"They are really extraordinary, they are working 24 hours a day, around-the-clock. In fact many of them have been working 36 or 48 hours without stopping," Schwarzenegger said.

Lesley Kirk, a spokeswoman for San Diego County, told AFP the total cost of fire damage had exceeded one billion dollars and was expected to go higher.

San Diego has emerged as the ground zero of the crisis, where the bulk of hundreds of thousands of evacuations have taken place.

A total of 318,000 households had been ordered evacuated in San Diego, where officials have put the numbers of displaced people at 500,000.

A spokeswoman from the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services said officials expected the numbers of displaced people to be "significantly higher" than 500,000 but would not give an estimate.

By late afternoon Wednesday, 5,000 evacuees remained in San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium, down from 12,000 who had spent the night at the facility on Tuesday.

Some evacuees were allowed to return to their destroyed homes in order to retrieve possessions. In the San Diego suburb of Rancho Bernardo, where more than 600 homes were destroyed, Mark Davis returned to find a charred ruin.

"We kind of thought when we left it did not have much of a chance," said Davis, who fled his home of 28 years on Monday after awaking to smoke and flames outside.

Schwarzenegger pledged support to help families and home-owners rebuild their shattered lives.

"It is a tragedy to think about people saving up all of their lives and working hard, they buy a home and become part of the American dream and lose it within an hour," he said.

The causes of the different fires raging throughout the state vary, with a fallen power line believed to be the cause of a blaze in Malibu and arson blamed for a fire in Orange County.

Malibu's evacuees were given the green light to return home as officials confirmed that a 1,800 hectare blaze near the Pacific Ocean seaside enclave had been snuffed out.

A spokesman for the Mexico consulate in San Diego meanwhile confirmed six people had been injured, one seriously, after becoming trapped in a wildfire while trying to cross the border into California early Monday.

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