Roger Kelton searches through the remains of his mother-in-law's home leveled by the Woolsey Fire, Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018, in the southern California city of Agoura Hills. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) (Associated Press) 
 
 Roger Kelton searches through the remains of his mother-in-law's home leveled by the Woolsey Fire, Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018, in the southern California city of Agoura Hills. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) (Associated Press) 
 
 MALIBU, Calif. (AP) — Thousands of people have returned to neighborhoods evacuated during Southern California's deadly wildfire but officials said the threat is far from over. 
 
 The huge blaze briefly gained renewed life Tuesday with a flare-up in the Santa Monica Mountains before water- and fire retardant-dropping aircraft beat it back. 
 
 However, except for an apartment building that burned in coastal Malibu, there was little sign of fire activity elsewhere in the vast burn zone west of Los Angeles. 
 
 The weeklong blaze in Ventura and Los Angeles counties had blackened an area about the size of Denver and was 40 percent contained. Since last Thursday, the blaze had marched steadily toward the sea, engulfing mobile homes, scenic canyon getaways and celebrity estates. 
 
 Firefighters could make more progress if relentless Santa Ana winds start to diminish as predicted Wednesday and Thursday. 
 
 Authorities allowed residents back into several communities on Tuesday, including a section of Malibu. Other areas have been repopulated since the weekend. Tens of thousands of people remained under evacuation orders, down from a high of as many as 250,000. 
 
 Officials tempered optimism with caution, saying there were hotspots and pockets of unburned vegetation that could ignite. 
 
 "We are not out of the woods yet. We still have some incredibly tough conditions ahead of us," Ventura County Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen said. 
 
 The death toll from the Woolsey fire stood at two — a pair of adults found last week in a car overtaken by flames. They have not been identified. 
 
 The number of homes and other structures destroyed had reached 435 but that number was sure to rise, warned Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby. Damage assessments were continuing, with crews having to gain access to canyon areas on foot. 
 
 Some people who stayed behind in coastal communities that were cut off by road closures got supplies by boat. Gas, food, baby wipes and horse pellets were among the items brought ashore in the Paradise Cove area of Malibu. Some residents donned wetsuits and swam ashore with cases of water and beer. 
 
 "It's pretty cool. It's really amazing that people out there know that we're kind of stranded here in Malibu," Cherie Millford Smart said. 
 
 The fire had burned near 152 square miles (393 square kilometers) of brush and timber, destroying more than 80 percent of National Parks Service land in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. 
 
 The area has not seen such a destructive blaze since 1993. The blaze has left an array of hazards, including trees ready to fall, downed power lines, toxins, water main and gas leaks. 
 
 A forecast of possible rain next week would help firefighters but also raised the prospect of potential mud flows, Osby said. 
 
 The cause of the Southern California fires remained under investigation. 
 
 Southern California Edison said last week that it reported to the California Public Utilities Commission "out of an abundance of caution" that there was an outage on an electrical circuit near where the fire started Thursday but there was no indication its equipment was involved in the fire reported two minutes after the outage. 
 
 Downed power lines and blown transformers have been blamed for several of the deadly fires that have burned in recent years. 
 
 A lawsuit was filed Tuesday over a wildfire in Northern California, where at least 48 people were confirmed dead in the Camp Fire that obliterated the town of Paradise. The suit on behalf of some victims accuses Pacific Gas & Electric Co. of causing the massive blaze. 
 
 A landowner near where the fire began said PG&E notified her the day before the wildfire that crews needed to come onto her property because some wires were sparking. 
 
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 Myers reported from Thousand Oaks. Associated Press writers John Antczak and Christopher Weber contributed from Los Angeles. ||||| A statuary figure of a boy stands outside one of at least 20 homes destroyed just on Windermere Drive in the Point Dume area of Malibu, Calif., Saturday, Nov. 10, 2018. Known as the Woolsey Fire, it has... (Associated Press) 
 
 A statuary figure of a boy stands outside one of at least 20 homes destroyed just on Windermere Drive in the Point Dume area of Malibu, Calif., Saturday, Nov. 10, 2018. Known as the Woolsey Fire, it has consumed tens of thousands of acres and destroyed dozens of homes. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon) (Associated Press) 
 
 PARADISE, Calif. (AP) — Authorities called in a mobile DNA lab and anthropologists to help identify the dead as the search went on for victims of the most destructive wildfire in California history. The overall death toll from the outbreak of fires at both ends of the state stood at 25 Sunday and appeared likely to rise. 
 
 The worst of the blazes was in Northern California, where flames reduced the town of Paradise, population 27,000, to a smoking ruin days ago and continued to rage in surrounding communities. The number of people killed in that fire alone, at least 23, made it the third-deadliest on record in the state. 
 
 Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said the county was bringing in more rescue workers and consulted anthropologists from California State University at Chico because in some cases "the only remains we are able to find are bones or bone fragments." 
 
 "This weighs heavy on all of us," Honea said. 
 
 Authorities were also bringing in a DNA lab and encouraged people with missing relatives to submit samples to aid in identifying the dead. 
 
 The sheriff's department compiled a list of 110 people unaccounted for, but officials held out hope that many were safe but had no cellphones or some other way to contact loved ones. 
 
 Firefighters gained modest ground overnight against the blaze, which grew slightly to 170 square miles (440 square kilometers) from the day before and was 25 percent contained, up from 20 percent, said David Clark, a spokesman for the state fire agency, Cal Fire. 
 
 Clark said Sunday that high winds and dry conditions were expected over the next 24 hours: "We're at a pivotal point now." 
 
 The blaze destroyed more than 6,700 buildings, nearly all of them homes. 
 
 Two people were also found dead in a wildfire in Southern California , where fires tore through Malibu mansions and homes in working-class Los Angeles suburbs. The severely burned bodies were discovered in a long residential driveway in Malibu, home to a multitude of Hollywood celebrities. 
 
 Among those forced out of their homes were Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian West, Guillermo del Toro and Martin Sheen. 
 
 Flames also raged on both sides of Thousand Oaks, the Southern California city still in mourning over the massacre of 12 people in a shooting rampage at a country music bar Wednesday night. 
 
 Cal Fire Battalion Chief Lucas Spelman said the larger of the two fires in the region was 10 percent contained, but firefighters braced for another round of Santa Ana winds, the dry gusts that blow out of the interior toward the coast. 
 
 The count of lost structures in both Southern California fires climbed to at least 179, authorities said. 
 
 All told, a quarter-million people were under evacuation orders across the state, officials said. 
 
 Drought, warmer weather attributed to climate change and home construction deeper into forests have led to more destructive wildfire seasons in California that have been starting earlier and lasting longer. 
 
 In Paradise, a town founded in the 1800s, residents who stayed behind to try to save their properties or who managed to return despite an evacuation order found incinerated cars and homes. 
 
 Wearing masks because the air was still heavy with smoke, people sidestepped metal that had melted off of cars or Jet-Skis as they surveyed their ravaged neighborhoods. Some cried when they saw nothing was left. 
 
 Jan McGregor, 81, got back to his small two-bedroom home in Paradise with the help of his firefighter grandson. He found his home leveled — a large metal safe and pipes from his septic system the only recognizable traces. The safe was punctured with bullet holes from guns inside that went off in the scorching heat. 
 
 He lived in Paradise for nearly 80 years, moving there in 1939, when the town had just 3,000 people and was nicknamed Poverty Ridge. 
 
 "We knew Paradise was a prime target for forest fire over the years," he said. "We've had 'em come right up to the city limits — oh, yeah — but nothing like this." 
 
 McGregor said he probably would not rebuild: "I have nothing here to go back to." 
 
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 This story has been corrected to show fix survivor's name to McGregor instead of MacGregor. 
 
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 Associated Press writers Daisy Nguyen, Olga R. Rodriguez and Sudhin Thanawala in San Francisco contributed to this report. Darlene Superville contributed from Paris.
– California's monstrous Woolsey fire is continuing to rage, and the AP reports that officials have called in a mobile DNA lab to assist in the grim task of identifying the 23 people killed so far. The fire's toll is expected to increase, and has extended to something of a Hollywood icon: Western Town in Paramount Ranch, the Old West set where Gunsmoke, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and most recently, Westworld, were filmed. "We are sorry to share the news that the #WoolseyFire has burned Western Town at #ParamountRanch in Agoura," tweeted the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, per CNN. "We do not have any details or photos, but it is our understanding that the structures have burned. This area is an active part of the incident and we cannot access it." Paramount Pictures bought 2,700 acres in 1927 for use as a "movie ranch," CNN notes. (This dad sang to his daughter as they made an incredible escape from the fire.)