CHEYENNE, Wyo. – More firefighters and equipment arrived Wednesday in attempts to fend off a wildfire threatening hundreds of houses near Casper.
“We haven’t lost any homes, but it’s real close,” said State Forester Bill Crapser.
The fire expanded rapidly in shifting winds and headed toward a subdivision of about 50 homes, Crapser said.
The fire was burning on Casper Mountain, about five miles south of Wyoming’s second-largest city. The lightning-sparked blaze had already burned nearly 10,000 acres, or 15 square miles, since Monday. Gov. Dave Freudenthal declared a state of emergency Tuesday.
A top-level federal fire management team took control Wednesday morning.
An estimated 300 homes in the heavily forested area were ordered evacuated Monday and Tuesday. More evacuation orders were likely, Crapser said.
Officials at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, said all available equipment and crews are fully engaged on more than 50 large wildfires across the West.
Idaho led the nation with 15 large wildfires Wednesday, including several on the fringes of rural mountain communities.
The state Department of Environmental Quality issued what it said was its first “red” air quality alert for the populous Boise Valley after drifting smoke from wildfires sent ozone pollution to unhealthy levels.
Elsewhere, firefighters were battling a lightning-sparked wildfire that had doubled in size to 40,000 acres, or 62 square miles, in Elko County, Nev.
Nationwide, more than 6.3 million acres have burned this year, well above the 10-year average of less than 4 million acres burned by this time of year, according to the fire center.
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