Some of the weary firefighters had not been at their homes and regular jobs for nearly a week.

"This one is bad, very bad," a weary firefighter, Juan Luis Sandoval, said tonight after the fire was under control.

Long lines of weary, smoke-blackened firefighters cheered our two-man relief team as we passed, and fire-retardant bombers flew low over us and dipped their wings in salute.

Across the city, weary and soot-covered firefighters reported responding to three and even four fires during the night, a phenomenon that the department had not experienced since the arson-filled years of the 1970's.

Thousands of weary firefighters who rushed into Southern California from across the state this week to battle raging wildfires got orders on Saturday to pack up and prepare to return home.

In west-central Montana today 540 soldiers from Washington state were on the fire lines, relieving weary firefighters mopping up the smoldering 247,000-acre Canyon Creek fire.

He was shown on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald with a caption that read "weary firefighter".

Temperatures dropped about 10 degrees from Monday and the Santa Ana winds gave way to coastal breezes with a bit more moisture, leaving many weary firefighters visibly relieved.

After the last body was carried out at 11 a.m., hundreds of weary, soot-blackened firefighters walked across the street into Madison Square Park.

He said Chief Thomas was merely trying to minimize the number of interviews of his weary and grieving firefighters, not to block any investigation.