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BECKY BOHRER
Associated Press Writer
HAMILTON, Mont. (AP) -- For Roy Mears, it was the 200 cattle he helped move as wildfires sweeping across southwestern Montana burned ever closer. He's pretty sure they are dead.
For Becki Linderman, it was how her quick trip into tiny Sula for lawn sprinklers ended with her being cut off from her home. For both, the impersonal flames have had personal repercussions.
``I've never been this scared in my life,'' Linderman said Sunday night as forests a few miles away went up in smoke and the sky glowed orange from the flames.
The fires that have burned across the country this year -- more than 63,000 of them, across nearly 4 million acres -- have devastated the West, changing hundreds of lives from California to New Mexico and now in the hard-hit northern Rockies. In a fire season federal officials say is the worst in 50 years, Montana's Bitterroot Valley now is ground zero.
``This is the most awesome fire I've ever experienced,'' said Jody Eberly, a 20-year Forest Service veteran of fighting Western fires.
There were more than 60 major fires burning nearly 1 million acres in 11 Western states early Monday, the National Fire Information Center in Idaho reported. Firefighters made headway against blazes in California and Utah over the weekend, but Mesa Verde National Park, Colo., remained closed for the second time this year and the situation along the Idaho-Montana line grew steadily worse.
Scores of evacuations were ordered in the Bitterroot Valley on Sunday evening as wind blew flames across a highway. A camp for firefighters in Sula, about 30 miles south of here, had to be moved.
Steve Frye, commander of the firefighting effort in the area, called the fire activity ``unprecedented in this valley.''
``Containment is a low, distant, third priority,'' he said, behind protecting lives and buildings. He said people who refused to heed evacuations orders were ``on their own.''
He also told a meeting of about 200 residents, many of them angry, fearful and calling for more to be done, that ``these aren't the kinds of fires we're going to run in front of and stop.'' He said there was little doubt homes and buildings would be destroyed.
From his house on a mountain ridge about 1 1/2 miles from a 3,600-acre fire near Hamilton, Bill Holzer said he could see the flames and their path of destruction.
``When it clears and you have some visibility, you can see the mountains around Blodgett Creek just devastated,'' Holzer said. ``There is nothing green left. The trees are just black sticks ... our million-dollar view is gone.''
The biggest fires in the Bitterroot were burning nearly 70,000 acres and 1,200 firefighters were on the scene. State officials said more than 850 houses and other buildings were threatened.
The forecasts offered little hope of relief from the hot, dry weather baking parts of the West.
In Idaho, which President Clinton is scheduled to visit Tuesday, a huge fire made a major run Sunday and fire crews were pulled back for their own safety. The fire had already burned more than 103,000 acres.
In southwestern Colorado, the Mesa Verde fire had spread across 5,000 acres late Sunday. Firefighters had no estimate of when they would have it under control.
``Hopefully the weather will hold and we'll be able to keep the fire from growing too much in size,'' fire crew spokesman Randy Burgess said.
The park, ravaged by a 23,000-acre fire in July, reopened Friday but was closed the same day by the new fire, which crept within a mile of a research center housing 2 million Southwest artifacts.
``If we lost this, it would really be devastating,'' park employee Sue Johnson said.
The boss of one 20-member crew in Mesa Verde, David Hamrick, said he has fought at least 10 fires this year in four states.
``We're feeling pretty well, but we'll see how we're looking in September,'' he said. ``That's when you really start to see the wear and tear of a long, hard fire season.''
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