Two Oregon Wildfires Threaten to Merge
The fires jumped containment lines Thursday, again forcing the evacuation of about 300 residents of this mountain community, officials said.
The fires were ``large and getting larger. In terms of acres, it's probably close to 80,000,'' said firefighting spokesman Tom Lavagnino. Authorities said the fires were threatening to merge.
The evacuation marked the second time in less than a month that Camp Sherman residents were forced from their homes. They were allowed back Saturday after a 12-day evacuation.
A 10-mile, westbound stretch of U.S. 20 between the town of Sisters and Camp Sherman was closed to allow passage of firefighting equipment, said Dave Davis, spokesman for the state transportation department.
The Red Cross was setting up a shelter at a church in Sisters. John O'Neil, an American Red Cross volunteer, said he could see a giant plume of smoke from the church.
``It's really blown up. The fire's just rocking and rolling,'' O'Neil said.
A message at the Camp Sherman Country Store said: ``It's 3:40 p.m. now. Evacuate now. The sirens you're hearing are the evacuation sirens. Evacuate now, don't wait. Good luck. Bye.''
Along the Columbia River east of Portland, the tourist town of Cascade Locks escaped a 470-acre wildfire that burned up to its outskirts and forced evacuation of about 200 homes.
Evacuees were allowed to return late Wednesday, and a 47-mile stretch of Interstate 84 that had been closed a day earlier reopened.
A former bed and breakfast and an abandoned house and barn were the only buildings destroyed despite flames that had licked at underbrush just feet from dozens of homes.
In northern California, firefighters reported progress Thursday against scores of wildfires sparked by lightning.
Two firefighters suffered heat-related injuries from a blaze in Lake County that, at 2,500 acres, was the biggest of the more than 200 fires that began Wednesday, said California Department of Forestry spokeswoman Karen Terrill.
Firefighters said they had contained 175 of the 239 fires in the region, and expected to contain most of the rest by Sunday.
Thousands of acres were said to have burned, but officials did not have a precise figure. No structures had been reported damaged.
In Montana, the last two families forced from their homes by dozens of fires that had burned across the state were allowed to return Thursday in Tom's Gulch near Lincoln.
``They've been coming in twice a day every day to see when they can go back in,'' said fire information officer Bob Brousseau. ``They had been living in a tent the whole time'' _ more than two weeks.
At the fire season's peak, hundreds of Montanans were chased from their homes by blazes that have charred more than 570,000 acres this summer.
Even as firefighters gained the upper hand against Montana's biggest fires, officials remained wary of flareups.
``We don't want to let our guard down,'' said Linda Slater with the Northern Rockies Interagency Information Center. ``We really have to be paying attention to the weather.''