Four people are confirmed dead and others are missing as crews battle the flames after a gas explosion rocked the San Francisco suburb of San Bruno. California Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado, who is standing in for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said that 53 people have been injured, including three critical burn victims and four firefighters.

Behind the disaster is PG&E, Pacific Gas & Electric, infamous for the contamination of drinking water with hexavalent chromium in the southern California town of Hinkley and losing $333 million to Erin Brockavich. A ruptured pipeline belonging to PG&E caused a blast so powerful residents said they thought it was an earthquake or plane crash. A large crater was left in the center of the neighborhood.

San Bruno Mayor Jim Ruane said he expected the number of dead to rise as firefighters tackle the grim task of sifting through the rubble.

Firefighters have made decent progress in a Rancho Palos Verdes brush fire that threatened upscale homes in upscale L.A. suburb, which has caused the evacuation over 1,000 residents, though some of those evacuations orders may be lifted this morning. However, officials warn that the danger has not passed at the hot, dry conditions that aggravated the fires are expected to last through the weekend. The fires have so far damaged six homes in Palos Verdes.

Residents of Palos Verdes can find refuge in nearby evacuation centers:

Palos Verdes Peninsula High School at Hawthorne and Silver Spur.

For Animals : Howlett Park at 25852 Hawthorne Boulevard.

It’s the third day of ravaging wild fires in Athens, Greece and thousands of acres of land has been burned near the Greek capital city. Thousands have been forced to evacuate their homes since Friday, when the blaze began in Grammatikos, 25 miles northeast of Athens. The fire then spread southeast and was fueled by pine trees and olive groves.

Today, authorities have ordered the evacuation of 20,000 residents in Aghios Stefanos, a suburb 14 miles north of Athens, where the fire has destroyed homes. So far, no injuries have been reported.

“Everything is up in flames here,” Panayiotis Bitakos, the mayor of Aghios Stefanos, told the New York Times. “We had no other choice than to order this evacuation as a precautionary measure.”

Houses are being threatened in the Santa Cruz  Mountains as fires have forced the evacuation of 2,400 people from their homes. With winds blowing, the fires grew overnight to 4,100 acres as hundreds of firefighters attempted to calm the flames, which are reportedly only 5 percent contained.

An international team of researchers that included Christopher Carcaillet from the Center for Bio-Archaeology and Ecology, has recently analyzed wildfire patters from thousands of years ago revealing that they were intimately linked with drastic changes in climate.

The study examined a period between 15,000 to 10,000 years ago. The time period was chosen because it exhibited a large scale, drastic climate change similar to our current situation. By examining sedimentary charcoal records and studying fossil pollen they were able to determine that wildfires are far more prolific when the climate is warming.

The result of this study is that as global warming continues we can expect to see a consistent increase in the number of wildfires; an obviously dangerous prospect considering the recent wildfire disaster that devastated Australia.