Firefighters battled dozens of blazes across the drought-stricken western U.S. as hot temperatures persisted in some areas and officials warned of gusty winds that could fuel more extreme fire behavior
The National Weather Service on Tuesday issued excessive heat warnings and advisories for parts of California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.will ease later this week, the service said. Meanwhile, unstable weather brought on by the dry conditions, gusty winds and low humidity could fuel extreme fire behavior in Idaho, Wyoming and Oregon, where the weather service issued red-flag warnings Tuesday.
In Oregon, more than 1,100 firefighting personnel made progress on the 201,923-acre Bootleg Fire as conditions eased Monday, officials said. But, with a layer of smoke that cooled the area starting to lift, firefighters were shifting their tactics to respond to more erratic fire behavior and increased activity, said Mark Enty, a public information officer with Northwest Interagency Incident Management Team 10, which was working on the fire.
Between Monday and Tuesday, the Bootleg Fire in the Fremont-Winema National Forest in south central Oregon grew more than 48,000 acres. Sparked by an unknown source last week,, forcing firefighters to seek safety from the front lines and the Klamath County Sheriff’s Department to issue citations and warnings of arrests for residents who chose to stay or return despite evacuation orders.
The Bootleg fire is one of 51 large fires that have burned nearly 1 million acres across the western U.S., according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The largest number of these fires are in Idaho, Arizona, Montana and California.
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