GRANTS PASS, Ore. — Higher humidity and favorable wind on Sunday helped firefighters trying to corral the northern end of Oregon's largest wildfire in more than a century.
Northeast winds helped firefighters set controlled fires during the night to remove fuel from the path of the 333,890-acre blaze.
"It's kind of burning back onto itself on the slopes," said Nigel Baker, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman. The fire was about 25 percent contained, said Carol Tocco of the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center.
In California, three U.S. Forest Service firefighters on their way to fight a 20-acre blaze were critically injured Sunday night when their fire truck plunged 60 feet down an embankment, authorities said.
The fire engine was traveling southbound on I-5 in San Bernardino, Calif., when it rolled off the highway. The cause of the accident was under investigation.
The truck was on its way to a blaze in Liddle Creek, said Karen Terrill, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry.
In Calimesa, Calif., about 30 miles west of Palm Springs, firefighters battled an out-of-control brush fire that tore through 250 acres, forcing 150 residents to evacuate and threatening 100 homes.
More than 250 firefighters fought the fast-moving fire with helicopters, airplanes and bulldozers. The fire, fueled by dry scrub oak, threatened several cherry and apple farms as well as horse ranches, officials said. No injuries were reported and the cause was under investigation.
Elsewhere in the Northwest, a fast-moving fire just across the Columbia River Gorge near Murdock, Wash., was under control by Sunday morning, authorities said.
Murdock's 400 residents were evacuated Saturday night, but residents were allowed to return by Sunday morning. Four houses, three outbuildings and some cars burned.
While the weather helped fire crews on the north side of the huge Oregon fire, conditions were less favorable on the fire's eastern flank, where hot, dry weather was forecast into the week. Firefighters were also working to keep flames away from power lines west of O'Brien, near the California line. The fire threatened to cuyt power to Crescent City, Calif.
Residents of nearby Gasquet, Calif., were allowed to return home Saturday after being evacuated earlier in the week when fire jumped a containment line.
More than 6,000 firefighters were at the blaze, which covers more than 460 square miles in southwest Oregon and northern California. It is now larger than the 1933 Tillamook Fire, which burned 311,000 acres of Oregon forest.
In California, another wildfire that had burned 61,550 acres northeast of San Diego was nearly surrounded Sunday. The blaze has destroyed at least 35 homes since July 29, the state Department of Forestry said.
As of Sunday, wildfires around the United States had burned 5.4 million acres this year. Last year, 1.7 million acres had burned by Aug. 11.