A huge fire that has been burning in largely unpopulated areas of Humboldt and Trinity counties since Aug. 23 escaped containment lines in three places Saturday and was threatening the Hoopa Indian Reservation.

Winds that reached gusts of 45 mph Saturday and forced firefighting aircraft out of the sky were in the 5-10 mph range Sunday. But, said CDF spokeswoman Rose Wyckoff, low humidity overnight meant there was so little morning dew, "it was like starting off the day at 4 p.m. in terms of the dryness."

U.S. Forest Service spokesman Bill Baker said the wind was so strong early Saturday that it literally blew a fire spotter in an observation tower near Bullards Bar out of bed, and flung a metal chair across the tower.

But if the wind was the villain Saturday, the lack of it Sunday caused the sinus-irritating smoke to settle in like dense fog, hampering efforts to fight the fires from the air. That left firefighters to make educated guesses where the flames might go next. The Yuba County fire, for example, which had been moving south most of the time, was moving slowly north Sunday afternoon.

"I've passed that sleepy stage," said bulldozer crew boss Steve Raymond of the U.S. Forest Service, Sunday evening at the Yuba County fire. Raymond had been on the line since 11 a.m. Saturday. "I'm in a zone where you just can't sleep so you just keep going until the job is done. They've been calling for replacements but we're not getting any."

There were few replacements to get. On the southern edge of the Yuba County fire, a U.S. Forest Service crew called the Bear Divide Hotshots had just been pulled off the line while an air attack crew dumped water by helicopter. The crew has had four days off in the past 56, and they thought they were going home when they got the call to the blaze near Camptonville.

"You get tired physically and mentally," said Doug Browand of Pasadena. "Mentally is the worst. You start getting small injuries, like cuts and sprains and blisters, and it's hard to keep up. You get so homesick that it consumes you, and sometimes you're just out of the game."

Others swept up in the disasters had a different kind of homesickness, the kind that comes from being sick with worry about your home being there when you get back.

Outside a restaurant near Oregon House, one evacuee clutched a toy poodle, and alternately cried and spoke with hope that her house had survived.

"We left when we saw the flames last night," said Marguerite Mason. "I know it's still standing today because I called the answering machine and it picked up."

With her husband, Bob, Mason had fled with their poodle, an English sheepdog, a cat - and a car full of wrapped Christmas presents, the result of a just-completed early holiday shopping trip.

Two years ago, a fire had burned right to the fence line of the Dobbins residents, leaving holes where their fence posts had been. That time, their house escaped unscathed. Sunday, they could only hope.

Evacuees were being offered shelter in Loma Rica, about 40 miles northeast of Yuba City. As of Sunday evening, about 100 people had shown up at the Loma Rica Community Church. Several campgrounds were being opened, and a steady stream of cars, trucks and recreational vehicles trickled out of the evacuated areas all afternoon.

At an evacuation shelter at a school in Loma Rica, Charles Pedigo appeared to be on the verge of pulling his sandy brown hair out in frustration. He and his wife Michelle had managed to get out many of their belongings, but they had to leave behind their 100- year-old Dobbins-area house.

"I have no idea what's going on," Pedigo said. "It's like a toothpick. It could go up in a minute."

But in the hillside community of Bella Vista, just east of Redding, Evonne Clark knew only too well what had gone on. Her modest one-story home had burned to a cinder. Clark and her daughter Kris had fled the home Saturday, taking only their two horses and some clothing.

"I got my pictures, my photographs, all I could grab," she said. "I wish I could have taken more."

When they returned after noon Sunday, little was left from the home they lived in for 18 years. The wood stove was gone, the refrigerator charred, the television melted, lamps, mattresses, trophies, blue ribbons, all burned into a charcoal-gray lump. The only thing they were able to retrieve from the rubble was a small ceramic cow.

Clark said she will move in with her mother, whose next-door home was unscathed by the fire. In a cruel irony, her mother's home was covered by fire insurance. Hers was not.

Some came home lucky. On a road just outside the small community of Dobbins, Clifford Smith was watering his garden of grapes and tomatoes Sunday afternoon. A scorched swath lay between garden and his handsome two-story house, which was untouched by the flames. Down the road, all that remained of a neighbor's house were two chimneys.

"We didn't know until we got here this morning if it was going to be standing," Smith said. "Boy, were we happy."

It was the second time in two years Smith has been lucky. In 1997, another huge fire started on the property next to him, but he escaped.

"Next time," he said, perhaps with post-flame bravado, "I'm not leaving."