Wildfires burning throughout 12 western states

WEST GLACIER, Mont. -- Firefighters bulldozed an old road Saturday in an effort to protect the town and the Glacier National Park headquarters complex from a spreading wildfire.

West Glacier will be evacuated if the fire moves to within three miles of town, fire information officer Andy Williams said. The town has some 250 permanent residents and grows to about 400 in summer.

The fire had about a mile to go before reaching that trigger point, Williams said.

Three wildfires in Glacier National Park already had chased away thousands of park visitors, and had blackened more than 40,000 acres. One fire, in the northwest portion of Glacier, destroyed six houses.

In Idaho, scores of firefighters attended a memorial service Saturday for Jeff Allen, 24, who was overrun by flames after he and a co-worker rappelled to the ground from a helicopter to fight a blaze in the Salmon-Challis National Forest.

On Friday, a helicopter pilot was killed when his aircraft crashed while fighting a wildfire in northeastern Washington state. Randall Harmon, 44, of Grants Pass, Ore., was the only occupant of the helicopter, which went down on the Colville Indian Reservation, fire spokesman Nick Mickel said.

The fire Harmon was fighting had burned about 2,200 acres and was 70 percent contained Saturday, authorities said. Federal and state investigators were expected at the scene Saturday and today.

Elsewhere in Idaho, more than 500 firefighters attacked an 18,700-acre fire three miles outside the small community of Atlanta. The town, 50 miles northeast of Boise, has about 40 permanent residents.

Colorado, California fires

Colorado firefighters were battling wildfires that had covered a total of about 11,000 acres, including a lightning-caused blaze that broke out Friday northwest of Fort Collins and forced the evacuation of 15 homes.

About 1,000 people were evacuated in Southern California's Riverside County, where about 200 homes were considered in danger after a fire quickly burned more than 4,300 acres, moving along rocky canyon ridges in the San Jacinto area.

In nearby Kern County, an 1,200-acre blaze spread into Sequoia National Forest but was heading away from groves of the forest's famed giant redwood trees.

In north-central Washington, a 64,000-acre blaze was four to six miles west of Loomis State Forest and could continue to burn -- eventually charring up to 190,000 acres -- until heavy rain or early snow, authorities estimated.

Both the Loomis fire in Washington and Montana's Glacier fire were heading toward Canada. The Loomis fire was within four miles of the border and U.S. fire managers have met with their Canadian counterparts to discuss strategy should the blaze cross into British Columbia.

Firefighters in Montana were doing much of their work by hand because Glacier officials were determined not to let mechanized equipment run roughshod over the park's fragile landscape.

The National Interagency Fire Center said 42 large fires were burning in 12 Western states Friday.