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SUSAN GALLAGHER
Associated Press Writer
HELENA, Mont. (AP) -- Wildfires burning across the West melted one major power line and shut down another supplying electricity to the Pacific Northwest.
There was no immediate risk of a power shortage, but if another heatwave hits, the other power plants in the regional energy system could be strained, Bonneville Power Administration spokesman Perry Gruber said Thursday.
``Our lines are in bad shape out there,'' Gruber said.
The two 500-kilovolt lines, the BPA's largest, were knocked out by smoke, heat and airborne particles from a 11,000-acre fire burning about 25 miles south of Helena.
Dozens of homes had to be evacuated in the area, and managers at the Montana Tunnels zinc and gold mine sent workers home fearing for their safety. In the Bitterroot Valley in southwestern Montana, wildfires have covered more than 300,000 acres and burned more than 50 homes.
Across the West, dozens of fires burned across 847,000 acres Thursday, the worst of them in the Northern Rockies, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. Since the Western fire season started, 4.3 million acres have burned, about twice the 10-year average.
In Idaho, 15 significant fires were burning on about 408,000 acres.
A special operations team of 1,500 firefighters, including 600 Marines, was using heavy equipment to fell trees in an effort to direct flames away from the water source vital to the town of Salmon in central Idaho.
A 26,700-acre fire in west-central Idaho's Payette National Forest continued to burn along the Salmon River, Forest Service officials said. Smoke could blacken and obliterate hundreds of ancient Indian pictographs and rock paintings on rock walls if flames catch on the other side of the river, forest archaeologist Steve Armstrong said.
At the fire south of Helena on Thursday, flames shot hundreds of feet into the air. More than 400 people evacuated homes earlier in the week and some nonresidential buildings burned Wednesday.
``We're doing our best, but until the weather changes, this is a very dangerous situation,'' said fire information officer Jack Kendley.
Gruber said the wildfire prevented repair crews from working on the power lines. ``It's pretty much up to the flames as to when the lines go back in service,'' he said.
Montana's Department of Environmental Quality on Thursday prohibited open burning, adding to an order Wednesday that all public use of state lands be banned. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management also extended use restrictions statewide on its lands to cut the risk of new fires.
The highest priority in Montana, a 96,000-acre complex of blazes in the Bitterroot Valley, triggered an order for another 50 evacuations Thursday. Nearly 1,000 people have evacuated, and more than 50 homes have burned.
In Colorado, firefighters took advantage of high humidity and rain that calmed a fire burning on 5,240 acres at Mesa Verde National Park, raising hopes that visitors may be able to visit portions of the park as early as next week. The fire was 90 percent contained Thursday night.
Park Superintendent Larry Wiese said the park would reopen as soon as possible, although visitors would not have access to ancient cliff dwellings in the burn area.
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