Southern California is no stranger to wildfires, but in this round, an exceptional number of fires have caused extraordinary destruction, experts say.

Fire crews are struggling to beat back the flames blowing across canyons and mountainsides, and hundreds of thousands of Southern Californians in seven counties have fled their homes.

"We have had an unfortunate situation that we have three things come together: very dry areas, very hot weather and then a lot of wind," Gov. Schwarzenegger said during a news conference Tuesday in Lake Arrowhead. "And so this makes the perfect storm for firefighters fighting all over the state of California."

By late Tuesday, the region's wildfires had claimed at least one life, in San Diego County, although that county's medical examiner has listed at least four more deaths as "fire-related." The blazes have injured at least 21 firefighters. More than 1,300 homes and businesses across Southern California were destroyed, and tens of thousands more were in danger as flames consumed at least 373,000 acres. Estimates of one million people have been evacuated from areas north of Santa Barbara, through the Lake Arrowhead area and past the Mexico border.

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Major roadways were closed, and National Guard troops were pulled off border patrols to help. Burning buildings often outnumbered firefighters, and limited resources forced firefighters in one instance in Orange County to drape themselves with emergency shelters while the Santiago Fire raged outside the thin protective material.

"This was a really significant event. We don't see winds this strong very often," said Ryan Kittell, a forecaster with the National Weather Service's Oxnard office. "We get Santa Anas every year, but talking to a lot of forecasters, they haven't seen winds like this in 10, 20 years."

Winds over the past two days gusted as high as 65 mph in parts of the San Bernardino Mountains where the Slide and Grass Valley fires burned homes, according to the National Weather Service.

The weather agency clocked gusts as high as 80 and 90 mph in San Bernardino, Ventura, Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Gusts reached 108 mph atop Whitaker Peak in Los Angeles County and 112 mph at Laguna Peak in Ventura County on Sunday, Kittell said.

Wild Weather

The fires started burning Sunday, rapidly crackling to life, blowing, spreading and merging across the landscape in several Southern California counties. High temperatures and low humidity persisted while the fires consumed vegetation ravaged by drought and, in some cases, bark beetles.

Experts and officials said high winds -- which could continue until this afternoon -- kept crews from waging a full air assault.

The drought coupled with especially strong Santa Ana winds this year made the firestorm inevitable, said Stan Wasowski, a forecaster with the weather service's San Diego office.

"You have four solid months without rain just drying up the vegetation. Don't you think that's going to be flammable?" he asked.

Shankar Mahalingam, a mechanical engineering professor at UC Riverside who studies the dynamics of wildfires, said the region's dry summer combined with more people moving into fire-prone areas created a combustible mix.

"The weather, the fuel, everything seems to just be happening at the same time," he said.

Brush across the San Bernardino National Forest has been at critically dry levels, Bob Sommer, the forest's vegetation management specialist, said earlier this month.

The Forest Service regularly tests the moisture level of shrubs such as manzanita and chemise, which are capable of carrying a fire and are the two most common brush species.

Strained Defenses

Critics said inadequate resources and other problems challenged firefighters already struggling with high winds and dry conditions.

Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, R-Orange, lambasted his fellow lawmakers for not implementing recommendations made by a blue-ribbon commission in 2004.

The commission, formed by Schwarzenegger following the deadly 2003 wildfires, recommended devoting more personnel and equipment to fighting fires.

Although the Legislature implemented some of the commission's recommendations, it didn't follow all of them.

Spitzer, who represents Corona and parts of Orange County, visited an Orange County fire Tuesday, joining that county's Fire Authority Chief Chip Prather in lashing out at the state.

Prather said there are not enough resources to go around because of the number of fires.

Schwarzenegger was asked about the criticism after he toured Lake Arrowhead, but seemed unfamiliar with the remarks.

He repeatedly said he was very pleased with everything and happy with how agencies were working together.

He said mutual aid agreements reached with other states following the 2003 fires and President Bush's quick emergency declaration already made the response to these fires better than in years past.

But some experts say more firefighting resources will not be enough if homes continue to sprout in Southern California's fire-prone woodland areas.

In the past, fires like those burning now might have blackened unoccupied wilderness, but now they tear through homes, many of them newly built, said Tom Scott, a natural resources specialist at UC Riverside.

California has thousands of miles and billions of dollars in homes built along the edges of flammable wildlands, and developers and homebuyers have flocked to those areas over the past several years, he said.

"No matter how compassionate we feel, there will come a time when there is no way for us to defend those homes against fire," Scott said.

But Ralph Gonzales, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service said the service has worked hard to remove the dead and dying trees that can fuel destructive wildfires. If not for the prevention efforts, the fires could have been worse, he said.

The Associated Press and staff writers Jennifer Bowles and Darrell R. Santschi contributed to this report.