GRACE LEE
Associated Press Writer
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- More residents were evacuated from homes in rural areas west of Yosemite National Park as wind-whipped flames made northern California a focus of firefighting in the West.
Across the West, 44 major fires were burning early Wednesday, two more than the day before, said fire information officer Scott Sticha of the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. However, 11 of those fires were contained, he said.
The 42 major fires active Tuesday had blackened 350,000 acres _ roughly half the size of the state of Rhode Island. Sticha said he didn't know how much had burned by Wednesday morning because he didn't know the size of the two new fires.
About 50 people were evacuated Tuesday from several rural neighborhoods in Mariposa County, west of Yosemite, joining residents of more than 3,000 homes who had been urged to leave since the fire was discovered Saturday. Authorities did not know how many people had heeded the call to evacuate before Tuesday.
Four homes had been destroyed by the 11,500-acre fire, and a highway leading east into the park has been shut down for three days. Officials believe it was an arson fire.
The fire was 60 percent contained late Tuesday and authorities estimated it would be fully contained by Saturday.
A wave of cool air and rain that moved into western Washington and Oregon helped firefighters gain ground on several fires in those states.
Near the mountain resort town of Leavenworth, Wash., where dozens of homes were evacuated earlier in the week, firefighters were able to encircle the blaze and extinguish hot spots in a 7,200-acre fire complex.
``With the fire laying down like it is, it gives firefighters the opportunity to get right up next to it and build fire lines,'' Forest Service spokesman Greg Thayer said Tuesday.
Most of the wildfires in Washington grew little if at all, said Vladimir Steblina of the Wenatchee National Forest. An exception was a 71,000-acre wildfire on the Colville Indian Reservation which jumped a fire line Tuesday and burned a narrow three-mile strip in about three hours, forcing the evacuation of about 50 homes.
Firefighters in Montana also were also watching wind speeds, and officials warned residents in the mountains north of Yellowstone National Park to prepare to evacuate if a 2,000-acre blaze near the tiny town of Emigrant continued to spread.
``Weather, fuels and topography are all working against us at this point,'' said Steve Frye, incident commander near Emigrant. The wind on Tuesday also doubled the size of a wildfire west of Glacier National Park to 2,300 acres.
In northern California, about 80 miles northwest of the blaze near Yosemite, a 3,800-acre wildfire near San Andreas kept about 50 people in a Red Cross shelter set up in high school, said Annette Roessler, spokeswoman for the California Department of Forestry.
People in the shelters ``are very disheartened and very upset,'' said Betty Lentz, a Red Cross Volunteer and resident. ``People left their animals and homes behind.''
In all, nearly 29,000 firefighters and support personnel were working on Western fires Tuesday, and about 500 soldiers from Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, Wash., were expect to join the fire lines by the weekend. A second battalion was scheduled to start training Thursday.
