Firefighters report progress against Western blazes

Scattered fires in California, Nevada, Oregon, and Texas have charred more than 200,000 acres   VIDEO CNN's Rusty Dornin reports on the fires that have been burning in Northern California, Nevada and Oregon. Windows Media 28K 80K

August 28, 1999
Web posted at: 9:15 p.m. EDT (0115 GMT)

(CNN) -- Firefighters battling a string of major blazes across the West reported progress Saturday, although lightning strikes continued to set small scattered wildfires.

"It seems like things are stabilizing," said Janelle Smith of the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. "There are a lot of new lightning strikes, but we are getting to them as best we can."

Nine of the 19 large fires in California, Nevada, Oregon and Texas, which have together charred more than 200,000 acres, were expected to be fully contained by Sunday.

Property damage has been minimal, largely because the fires have been in inaccessible areas, and cooler temperatures have helped in recent days.

On Friday, approximately 460 new small fires were reported across the nation, about 300 of which were across the South from east Texas to Florida. The rest were scattered throughout the Western states.

Rain not in sight for Northern California

Nearly 12,000 firefighters remained on the front lines across the West. While rain wasn't expected in hard hit northern California or Nevada on Saturday, thunderstorms were expected to bring relief in Montana, eastern Idaho and Wyoming.

In California, 13 large fires had spread across more than 117,000 acres. Most of the state's budget for firefighting has been spent just two months into the fiscal year.

The Air National Guard used tanker planes to battle fires in Shasta County and in Butte County, where 47 wildfires burned 30,000 acres this week.

Nine of the 19 large fires in California, Nevada, Oregon and Texas were expected to be fully contained by Sunday

"The last two days we put in about 284,000 gallons of water," said Jim Erickson of the California Department of Forestry. "It really helped slow down the fire spread."

Near Carson City, Nevada, 40,000 acres had burned in a blaze that was expected to be 60 percent contained by Sunday. Across the state, more than 1.4 million acres have burned in 863 fires.

A fire near Oregon's Sheldon-Hart National Wildlife Refuge, which has burned 30,000 acres, was near containment. In Texas, National Guard helicopters were called out to battle a 1,700-acre fire west of Lampasas.

While wildfires have burned 4.1 million of acres of land this year, this is not the United States' worst fire year. In 1996, 20,000 more fires had been reported by this time of the year, and they had scorched about 450,000 more acres, Smith said.

Correspondent Rusty Dornin and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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