Every souvenir shopper in California knows the warning: "You break it, you bought it."

A giant firefighting plane dumps 20,000 gallons of water over McClellan Field in a demonstration of its capabilities Thursday.

Well before balls of flame engulfed the hills of Santa Barbara, the federal government was already taking an accounting of California's likely devastation in the hot, dry fire season to come.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger started the week promoting Wildfire Awareness Week in events with fire officials, during which he suggested he might have to cut 1,700 firefighting jobs if voters reject the May 19 ballot measures.

A prescribed fire operation in the Rubicon Bay area on Lake Tahoe's West Shore, which began Thursday, will be creating smoke through the weekend.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, more popularly known as Cal Fire, is urging residents to create a 100-foot zone of defensible space around their homes before temperatures and the fire risk heat up.

For one California man, a little fix-it job in the driveway wound up costing big – $1 million, to be exact. This week, the U.S. Department of Justice approved a settlement with a homeowner from North Fork, east of Madera, whose attempt to sharpen a wood splitter with an electric grinder sparked a fire in the Sierra National Forest that burned more than 4,100 acres.

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