Labeled the Gap fire, it was only 10 percent contained on Friday. It has burned through 5,400 acres and threatened 2,674 structures, officials said.

Across the state, 60 active fires, fueled by decades of old brush and brutally efficient winds, were burning actively Friday, officials said, with nearly 600,000 acres scorched. State highways and local roads were closed throughout the state as scores of firefighters scrambled to control the myriad blazes.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered 400 soldiers from the California National Guard to reinforce firefighters battling flames in the north. One volunteer firefighter died Thursday while working as a spotter on a fire in Mendocino County.

Thousands of residents from the top of the state to its celebrated central coast repeated the grim annual ritual of leaving homes and securing precious objects from ferocious blazes, a drill that has seemed to come earlier and more often in this drought-plagued state, where many people have chosen to live in remote areas near combustible timber.

The most worrisome blazes are burning hundreds of miles apart — the Gap fire, where high winds pose a grave threat to homes, and one near the Big Sur area of the coast, where thousands of residents and guests of the coastal resorts in the area have evacuated.

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