SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) – A second wave of residents displaced by Southern California’s wildfires returned home yesterday as a weekend of cooler, calmer weather helped firefighters begin to get the upper hand.

As the threat began to diminish, authorities also sent home some of the thousands of firefighters who have been battling blazes scattered from San Diego County to the suburbs of Los Angeles.

Some evacuees got the go-ahead Saturday to check on their homes. Among them were JoDee Ewing and her husband, Steve, who found little standing of their 1920s-era house but the stone chimney, the foundation and -for some inexplicable reason – their rose bushes.

“I still have roses blooming,” said Ewing, 40. “But there’s no toilets. They disintegrated.”

The fire that started Oct. 25 just up the road from the Ewings’ place, in Upper Waterman Canyon on the edge of the San Bernardino National Forest, consumed 91,285 acres. In the last week, that blaze and a half-dozen others across Southern California have burned about 750,000 acres, destroyed nearly 3,400 homes and killed 20 people.

In San Bernardino County, some firefighters were beginning to head to home, said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Bob Narus, although he couldn’t say exactly how many. In San Diego County, firefighters were expected to begin leaving after spending a few hours resting yesterday morning, said California Department of Forestry spokeswoman Barb Daskoski.

Though fog, lower temperatures and even snow slowed the spreading flames, more than 12,000 firefighters were still on the lines early yesterday.