LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Good weather and an increased firefighting force helped slow huge wildfires burning Wednesday in a vast area of southern Nevada.
Improving conditions reduced the danger for the tiny railroad town of Caliente that earlier watched two massive blazes burn toward it.
''We have made progress,'' said Kathy Jo Pollock, a U.S. Forest Service fire spokeswoman. ''We've got 25 percent containment and we have really favorable weather conditions today.''
With fire lines still about 10 miles from town, Pollock said there was ''no threat to the town of Caliente.''
Firefighters were working five lightning-sparked blazes in a wide area northeast of Las Vegas. Seven other blazes have been contained, and no structures have been destroyed.
Some blazes burning through vast stretches of uninhabited desert and mountains merged, with the total fire zone covering approximately 500,000 acres. Of that, as much as half had burned, Pollock said. The large area was divided into two complexes for the purposes of fighting the fires.
One corner stretched into southwest Utah, to about two miles from the hamlet of Motoqua. Pollock said it was not expected to threaten homes or structures.
Of the many blazes, one burned in the Delamar Mountains, home to a herd of bighorn sheep. Incident commanders were still mapping the far-reaching burn area, which includes federally protected desert tortoise habitat on Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service land.
Fires hopscotched across brittle desert grasses, mesquite, Joshua trees and mountain pines, officials said.
With the arrival of 58 more state and federal firefighters, Pollock said the number attacking the Mesquite and South Desert fire complexes swelled to 1,019.
That's more than the 1,014 residents of Caliente, which is located in a notch of the Delamar Mountains in Lincoln County, about 110 miles from Las Vegas and 250 miles from Salt Lake City.
''Nobody's panicking,'' Tom Acklin, a town council member, said by telephone. ''There's probably no danger of losing any of the homes here. Our primary concern was people with respiratory problems if the smoke got really bad. But it's better today than it had been.''
Fire spokesman David Chevalier said firefighters hunkered down Tuesday to defend a Union Pacific Railroad switching enclave at Elgin, about 20 miles south of Caliente, but the fire parted ''like the ocean hitting a barrier reef.''
''It circumvented the town, and nothing was burned,'' Chevalier said. ''It kept burning into the mountains.''
No serious injuries were reported Wednesday. One firefighter suffered a broken ankle earlier in the week, and a smokejumper injured his hip last week parachuting into the area.
Firefighters from Nevada, California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming were aided by six fixed-wing aircraft and six helicopters, Pollock said.
Estimated firefighting costs topped $4.2 million, she said.
A separate fire around Goodsprings, south of Las Vegas, was declared 95 percent contained Wednesday after burning 33,569 acres of desert and rugged mountain terrain.
About 140 firefighters remained on the fire lines, said Pam Sichting, a Forest Service fire information officer.
The fire about 10 miles southwest of Las Vegas was sparked by lightning June 22. No serious injuries were reported and no structures were damaged. The firefighting cost was estimated at almost $1.7 million.
On the Net:
National Interagency Fire Center: www.nifc.gov
