Backfires Lit in Effort to Save 2 Towns Near Yellowstone

SILVER GATE, Mont. — Fire crews lit a three-mile line of flames through the forest Sunday in a “last-ditch” effort to buffer two towns from a wildfire raging along the northeast boundary of Yellowstone National Park, where a spokeswoman said the situation was deteriorating.

Local authorities urged the 150 residents of Silver Gate and Cooke City to evacuate in case the backfires, built to cut off the main fire’s fuel source, failed to protect the two park gateway communities.

Some residents refused to leave as 53 fire engines stood ready to protect homes in both towns from the 60,000-acre-plus fire approaching from the west. Montana law makes evacuations voluntary.

Fire information officer Dave McMorran said most people had left Silver Gate just outside the northeast entrance to the park, but that many residents of Cooke City--three miles to the east--believed there was little danger.

“If (the fire) jumps out of the line and explodes, it could burn up that canyon faster than they could drive out of there,” he said Sunday night. “So we’re spreading the word around tonight, ‘Don’t sit around and wait, folks.’ ”

More than 600 firefighters were tending the backfire, which was expected to burn nearly 5,000 acres by late today.

“It’s going to be a siege for the next 48 hours,” said Pat Kaunert, a fire information officer.

“We’re creating a massive buffer in a last-ditch effort to save this town,” Kaunert said. “We need two miles of buffer in front of the fire to hold it. Two miles of black.”

The blazes now cover some 910,000 acres of the greater Yellowstone area, including 611,000 acres within the park itself, or more than one-fourth of Yellowstone’s 2.2 million total acreage.

Within Yellowstone, firefighters tried to save wooden foot bridges and protect a campground.

“This situation is growing increasingly more serious day by day,” said Yellowstone National Park spokeswoman Joan Anzelmo. “It is a magnitude that no one in their wildest imagination or scientific predictions could have suggested.”

Anzelmo added that without help from the weather, no amount of money spent by the National Park Service or the U.S. Forest Service will help douse the blazes. Winds were relatively calm, but forecasts called for variable winds up to 30 m.p.h. later in the week.

Some Forest Service firefighters criticized the National Park Service for allowing fires to burn uncontrolled earlier this summer despite dry conditions. Officials said at the time that it was their policy not to fight lightning-caused fires in the wilderness, which they consider a natural part of forest regeneration.

Elsewhere in the West, Washington’s most serious forest fires ballooned to more than 12,500 acres in the northeast part of the state, sending smoke and ash over the town of Republic.