South Lake Tahoe, Calif. ? Firefighters racing the weather for control of a turbulent wildfire near this popular resort got a bit of a break Wednesday as high winds forecast to arrive by early afternoon held off, giving crews time to shore up their defenses.

The extra few hours of calm allowed firefighters to fortify their lines, U.S. Forest Service spokesman Tom Efird said.

They were trying to keep the wildfire from consuming more buildings near the small town of Meyers where it started, and from reaching several densely populated subdivisions near where one flank of the blaze jumped a containment line. The fire has destroyed 200 homes since it emerged over the weekend.

“The worst-case scenario is the fire would break out in multiple locations,” said Rich Hawkins, a U.S. Forest Service fire commander. “The biggest problem is just that there are so many homes in a combustible environment.”

The governors of the two states Lake Tahoe straddles, California’s Arnold Schwarzenegger and Nevada’s Jim Gibbons, toured neighborhoods charred by the fire.

Examining the remains of a house in the Tahoe Mountain neighborhood, just outside South Lake Tahoe, the ex-bodybuilder Schwarzenegger hoisted a dumbbell from the debris, marveling that it was one of the few objects to survive. “Amazing,” he told an aide.

Little else survived the inferno. Metal mattress coils, a bicycle, tools, half-melted televisions, concrete foundations and chimneys were about all that was left of the burned houses. Some neighboring buildings stood virtually untouched.

California’s insurance commissioner pegged the total property damage at $150 million.

Hundreds of homes within view of the lake remained under mandatory evacuation orders, while residents of already damaged areas were still being asked to stay away.

Many returned anyway – at least long enough to stuff more belongings into cars and trucks before leaving again. Others came back and camped out, readying garden hoses and even buckets to douse embers expected to land nearby if winds kicked up as expected. In all, about 2,000 people were evacuated