Battles Continue Against Wildfires Cooler, More Humid Weather Expected To Help Firefighters

Weary firefighters were joined Saturday by crews from as far away as Alaska and Puerto Rico as they fought to put out fires that were scorching Northern California’s already parched terrain.

Wildfires were burning through sagebrush and grass, mostly in rugged, remote areas of Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Washington and Nevada.

No serious injuries were reported in any of the fires.

Fire crews were hoping cool and humid weather moving in over the weekend would help them tame a 108,000-acre wildfire near an Indian reservation in central Oregon.

“For the next few days, we’re going to have temperatures 10 to 15 degrees lower and humidity will be higher,” Roland Emetaz, spokesman for the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center, said Saturday. “It will help everyone get a handle on these fires.”

The Oregon fire, which was at least 60 percent contained, moved away from subdivisions where 11 homes were burned and 150 more were evacuated Wednesday.

The blazes have burned nearly 355,000 acres in seven Western states since Aug. 8, pushing the total to 3.99 million acres to date, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise. Last year, wildfires burned 1.43 million acres in the West.

California’s largest fire, in the Mendocino National Forest, consumed more than 24,000 acres and kept residents on alert for possible evacuation.

Steep terrain continued to hamper firefighters and erratic winds made the task even more difficult, California Department of Forestry spokesman Fred Bell said.

Some 70 miles southeast of Sacramento, near Sonora, a lightning-sparked fire burned 5,200 acres and hundreds of residents were warned to evacuate.

Nearby, on the northeastern borders of Yosemite National Park, 11 wildfires burned in steep canyons.

In Southern California, humidity rose and temperatures sank slightly, giving crews some relief as they fought a brush fire that covered nearly 30,000 acres northeast of San Luis Obispo.

That fire, which began Thursday afternoon, was about 30 percent contained.

More than half of the 10,000 firefighters battling the Western fires were assigned to Oregon, with 1,300 battling the fire near the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, about 90 miles southeast of Portland.