The Army was called in to help weary fire-fight-ers attack a 77,000-acre blaze near a northern California resort area, one of dozens of wildfires in nine Western states.
This year's fires could break records for the the most acreage blackened so early in the season, officials said.Some 650 Fort Carson, Colo., soldiers were summoned Tuesday to Lake County, site of the Fork Fire in the Mendocino National Forest.
The week-old blaze was only 25 percent contained Monday night after doubling in size over the weekend. The fire, the most serious of the blazes dotting Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington, is near the resort area surrounding Clear Lake, 100 miles north of San Francisco.
Already this summer, 4.3 million acres have burned across the West, exceeding year-end totals for all but three years - 1988, 1990 and 1994, when drought and heat left the region tinder dry.
"This is the most we've burned this early in the West," said Renee Snyder, a spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise. "There are so many fires going on at one time that the resources are being stretched."
One thousand people in five communities were evacuated and three more towns were on alert because of the Fork Fire, which created a cloud of smoke, rained ash for hundreds of miles and threatened about 400 structures.
Some 3,170 firefighters, sweating in fireproof suits, crashed through trees and underbrush to clear lines to protect the communities.
In the Sierra Nevada, a 40,000-acre forest fire threatened 22 turn-of-the-century homesteader cabins in Yosemite National Park's Aspen Valley and the nearby community of Tuolumne City.
In Southern California, a 69,000-acre fire roared unchecked through dense brush in rough terrain near San Luis Obispo. The blaze moved into the Los Padres National Forest, where the heat and terrain were so bad that nearly 1,800 firefighters had to stay away and instead concentrate on creating firebreaks around the perimeter. Seventeen firefighters suffered minor injuries.
In southwestern Colorado, about 100 firefighters battled a wind-whipped fire in Mesa Verde National Park, hoping to keep the flames from the visitor center, lodge and museum. The lightning-caused blaze had grown to 4,000 acres Tuesday after forcing the evacuation of hundreds of tourists from the long, high mountaintop of Anasazi cliff dwellings that date to the 10th century. It was estimated at only 15 percent contained.