WEST GLACIER, Mont. (AP) -- Crews trying to keep a wildfire away from West Glacier and a village inside Glacier National Park faced a threat of high wind and temperatures near 100 degrees Wednesday.
The fire, within 1 1/2 miles of the park's western entrance at West Glacier, had blackened some 14,200 acres inside and outside the huge park, officials said Wednesday.
Wind was expected to gust up to 22 mph. Fire behavior specialist John See said that could throw embers more than a half-mile and create spot fires ahead of the main blaze.
``I'm not going to pull any punches,'' See told about 300 people at a public meeting in Columbia Falls Tuesday evening. ``It's going to be challenging for fire behavior (Wednesday).''
Firefighters set backfires Tuesday to create a 2,000-acre ``black line'' to keep the blaze away from the park headquarters complex near West Glacier and from nearby Apgar Village.
West Glacier, on the western edge of the park, was mostly empty, except for emergency workers and about 60 residents who ignored Monday's order to leave. About 500 residents did evacuate Glacier and the surrounding area. Earlier, thousands of tourists had fled other parts of the national park.
``It's a little unnerving. It's pretty ugly looking.'' said Dave Dumon of nearby Coram, outside the park.
The fire near West Glacier was one of three wildfires in and around the park that had burned a total of nearly 50,000 acres.
Elsewhere, two Idaho firefighters were injured in separate accidents at a fire that had burned 5,600 acres in the Salmon-Challis National Forest northwest of Salmon.
Last week, three firefighters and two helicopter pilots were killed in Washington, Arizona and Idaho.
The National Interagency Fire Center said major fires were burning Wednesday in Arizona, California, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. Fires have charred 1.77 million acres so far this year, compared to 4 million acres by this time last year.
