Blaze Threatens Small Town Near Yellowstone

Firefighters prepared to hose down much of a small Montana town near Yellowstone National Park if necessary to keep a forest fire at bay Friday, and officials warned that more lightning and dry, hot weather were forecast for the weekend.

“It’s like sitting on a time bomb,” said Scott Phillips, recreation officer for the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in central Idaho. “If we can get through this weekend without a conflagration, it will be a miracle.”

Forests and rangeland burned Friday in parts of Wyoming, especially in Yellowstone, and in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and California.

25,000 on the Lines

The Boise Interagency Fire Center, the logistics command for the national battle against forest fires, reported more than 25,000 firefighters, military and support personnel on the lines of more than three dozen major fires in the West.

Fire center spokesman Arnold Hartigan called it “the most severe fire season in almost 30 years.” More than 3.5 million acres have burned, two-thirds of that in Alaska, and suppression costs already exceed $250 million.

U.S. Forest Service officials asked people to stay out of forests in central Montana, and restrictions on such things as open campfires were tightened in Idaho and Washington. Many forests in Oregon were closed to recreational use.

Flames a Mile Away

The focus of attention Friday in and around Yellowstone, where about 550,000 acres have been charred, was the small town of West Yellowstone, Mont., just outside the park’s west entrance. It was threatened by flames about a mile away that were spreading from the 118,000-acre North Fork fire inside the park.