Wildfire Smoke Fuels Respiratory Ailments

(CBS/ AP)  Dry terrain, not strong winds, is fueling the blazing Southern California wildfires and the result is hazy, smoky air blanketing the region, CBS News correspondent Kelly Cobiella reports.

The massive wildfires are spreading a toxic cloud, aggravating allergies and triggering asthma attacks among some residents.

At Glendale Adventist Hospital, about 8 miles from the flames, the emergency room is bustling with patients fighting for breath.

Dr. Anthony Cardillo, one of the hospital's ER doctors, says there has been an increase in patients with asthma-like symptoms.

One of those patients, Ilda Padilla, told Cobiella, "I just felt like I had my last breath."

Meanwhile, crews battling the massive wildfire north of Los Angeles have received major assistance from the weather, allowing them to build lines around a quarter of the blaze, but the fight is far from over. Fire officials fear the winds could kick up Wednesday, as flames creep closer to homes and a historic observatory.

More humid weather and a slight break in the blazing heat helped the brush resist burning, but crews were bracing for the possibility of thunderstorms, dry lightning and wind Wednesday afternoon.

U.S. Forest Service incident commander Mike Dietrich was not willing to say a corner had been turned.

"Right now if I were in a boxing match, I'd think we're even today," Dietrich said Tuesday.

Firefighters on Tuesday lit backfires and hand crews and bulldozers combed the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, cutting broad and winding fire lines, raising containment to 22 per cent. Since erupting Aug. 26, the blaze has destroyed more than 60 homes, scorched 199 square miles of tinder-dry brush and forced some 12,000 people to flee their homes.

View California Wildfires photo essay

Officials on Tuesday lifted evacuation orders in wide areas of La Canada Flintridge and La Crescenta, but about 6,000 people remain out of their homes.

In a hillside neighborhood of Glendale, Frank Virgallito stood in a group anxiously watching a controlled burn edge toward their neighborhood.

Virgallito said he and his neighbors had been on high alert since Friday but ignored a voluntary evacuation.

"You don't sleep well," Virgallito said. "I get up every hour and a half or two hours to get a good view of where the fire is. For four days we've been a little sleep-deprived. It's unnerving."

Virgallito said he saw deer, coyote and skunks scampering down his street away from the heat and ash of the smoldering wilderness.

Officials also worried about the threat to a historic observatory and TV, radio and other antennas on Mount Wilson northeast of Los Angeles. But on Tuesday, firefighters set backfires near the facilities before a giant World War II-era seaplane-turned-air tanker made a huge water drop on flames inching toward the peak from the north and west.

Firefighters and longtime residents know it could be so much worse. Autumn is the season for the ferocious Santa Ana winds to sweep in from the northeastern deserts, gaining speed through narrow mountain canyons, sapping moisture from vegetation and pushing flames farther out into the suburbs.

"If we had Santa Anas, we still have all this open land here on the western flank and islands of vegetation would throw embers into the air, which would blow down to the homes..." Fire spokesman Henry Martinez said, his voice trailing off as he imagined the worst-case scenario. "Let's hope that doesn't happen."

Smoke billowed thousands of feet up in the air, forming what firefighters call an "ice cap," which dissipated and was pushed east for at least 800 miles.

In Colorado, smoke from the Station Fire combined with soot from local fires to block mountain views from Denver.

Lance Williams, 49, managed to save his aunt's home in Delta Flats, a remote community tucked in a canyon in the Angeles National Forest, but returned Tuesday to find neighbors' homes in ashes.

"It looked like hell," Williams said. "The fire was creating its own winds. There was no way of predicting which way it would go."

He said he used a water pump to fight off the firestorm that raced down hillsides into the canyon. By the time he ran out of water, fire crews had arrived to defend the home that had been in his family since 1945.

Two firefighters - Capt. Tedmund Hall, 47, of San Bernardino and firefighter Specialist Arnaldo "Arnie" Quinones, 35, of Palmdale - were killed Sunday when their vehicle plummeted off a mountain road. Quinones' wife is expecting a child soon, and Hall had a wife and two adult children.