BIG SUR

Hundreds get to check their homes

Firefighters pushed back a blaze threatening this small coastal community just enough to allow hundreds of people to check on their homes Tuesday as separate fires forced residents of other Northern California towns to evacuate.

Fire crews have been straining to cover hundreds of active California wildfires, many of which were ignited by a lightning storm more than two weeks ago. A heat wave forecast to linger in much of the state until the weekend was making the job all the more difficult.

Winds of up to 30 mph fanned a blaze in Butte County, where firefighters went door to door overnight to evacuate 800 to 1,000 residents from the towns of Concow and Yankee Hill, about 85 miles north of Sacramento. Nearby Paradise, where a fire destroyed 74 homes last month, was also ordered evacuated, along with Ono, a rural town about 170 miles north of Sacramento.

SACRAMENTO

Conserve power, state officials urge

State officials on Tuesday urged energy conservation and opened cooling centers amid a heat wave that brought record temperatures across much of Northern California.

Today was predicted to be even hotter throughout the Central Valley. Highs are likely to be in the triple digits across much of the northern half of the state until at least Friday, National Weather Service forecaster Christine Riley said.

"We're looking at the possibility of record-breaking temperatures again up and down the valley," she said.

LOS ANGELES

Hospital staff won't be charged in death

No criminal charges will be filed against a nurse or other medical staff at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital over the death of a homeless woman who writhed in pain on the emergency room floor for nearly an hour, a county prosecutor concluded Tuesday.

"It cannot be proved beyond a reasonable doubt" that the nurse's actions were a substantial factor in the death "or that any member of the MLK nursing or medical staff was criminally negligent," Deputy District Attorney Susan Schwartz says in a report to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. "Prompt intervention would not have saved her life," the report says.

—From wire reports