As California smolders one week after the outbreak of wildfires that scorched several hundred thousand acres, destroyed 1,800 homes and left seven people dead, experts say the scale of destruction could have been reduced.

Richard Carson, a professor of fire policy at the University of California San Diego, said that despite several notable successes, including overall co-ordination and the smooth evacuation of more than half a million people, certain aspects of the crisis represented a "colossal failure."

California authorities had been aware there was a high risk of a firestorm three days beforehand, Carson said, citing weather forecasts for high temperatures, low humidity and powerful desert winds following a year of record-low rainfall.

Yet it was not until the blazes had erupted on Sunday that firefighting reinforcements were requested by officials in San Diego.

"The call went out on Sunday from authorities in San Diego for extra resources. Those resources were not here on Monday morning," Carson said.

"The critical thing with fires is that the response needs to be measured in hours and not days."

As a result, the flames were able to race towards residential areas unchecked, with catastrophic consequences.

"If you have a fire of this magnitude and it races 30 miles towards the ocean, and it is not stopped by your firefighting forces, that has to represent a colossal failure," Carson said.

Nevertheless, Californian and federal authorities had registered major successes by establishing a clear command structure and planning for a large-scale evacuation, Carson and other analysts said.

San Diego's use of a new "Reverse 911" automated telephone system, which placed calls to more than 300,000 households ordering them to evacuate, had given people living in threatened areas a vital heads-up of several hours.

Evacuation centers -- such as the facility set up at San Diego's American football Qualcomm Stadium -- were well-stocked and ran efficiently.

"Evacuating half a million people in a smooth and orderly fashion with lots of notice is a remarkable accomplishment," Carson said.

That contrasted starkly with wildfires in California four years ago which left 22 people dead, with many victims leaving it too late to evacuate.

Mark Healey, a professor of history at UC Berkeley outside San Francisco who specializes in comparative disasters, said the "scalding influence" of the 2003 tragedy had helped focus the minds of Californians and local government.

"People were criticized for not evacuating quickly enough last time but this time they did," Healey told AFP. "The fire departments were chastised for not coordinating better last time -- this time they did."

An official inquiry into the biggest of the 2003 blazes, the Cedar Fire, painted a damning picture, citing "disorganization, inconsistent or outdated policies" as well as "planning or logistics in disarray."

"The 2003 fire was a model of chaos and confusion," said Carson. "None of the different agencies were able to talk to each other, there were lots of turf battles about who was in charge. That situation seems to have been fixed."

Jeanne Perkins, an earthquake disaster strategist in San Francisco, credited California's Standardized Emergency Management Systems (SEMS), which brought police and firefighters together under a mutual chain of command.

She compared the system to the logistical chaos in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

"After Katrina hit, they had no clue about how to coordinate there -- people were sitting around saying, 'Now, who are you? What should we do?'

"And here, because we invented SEMS, the lines of authority were clear, and we could move faster," Perkins told the San Francisco Chronicle.

The US government had also applied lessons from Katrina when dealing with the California fires.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), lambasted for its performance in New Orleans, opened an office in Pasadena on Monday, the day after the blazes began.

President George W. Bush, criticized for the sluggish response to Katrina, also made federal support available immediately before touring the region on Thursday.

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