Triple-digit heat hurts fight against wildfires

RENO, Nev. — Triple-digit heat across much of the U.S. West hampered crews battling dozens of wildfires Thursday, including one threatening the main travel route to the Burning Man counterculture festival in the Nevada desert.

Thousands of people have been driven from their homes amid hot weather in Oregon, Montana and California, where a blaze burned 10 homes and threatened 500 more near a hard-hit community and another kept a popular road to Yosemite National Park closed.

In Nevada, more than 70,000 people were expected at the Burning Man art and music celebration in the Black Rock Desert by the time it culminates Saturday night with the burning of a towering effigy, and the vast majority get there by a state highway that was closed for several hours because of the fire.

The lightning-sparked fire has burned about 45 square miles and is about 40 miles south of the festival. There were no reports of injuries.

“It’s not close to Burning Man at this time,” Interagency Fire spokesman John Gaffney said. “There’s a considerable distance between the fire and the festival. At this point, the goal is to keep the road open as much as we can.”

Other fires in Nevada closed a 65-mile stretch of highway just south of the state line with California and burned a remote part of a vast former nuclear proving ground.

Nevada National Security Site spokeswoman Tracy Bower said the lightningsparked fire covered almost 4 square miles but wasn’t considered a threat to people or buildings.

More than 1,000 nuclear detonations occurred at the former Nevada Test Site north of Las Vegas from 1951 to 1992. It now hosts non-nuclear experiments and safety training.

Elsewhere, thousands of people have fled about two dozen fires in Oregon alone, and more than 1,000 homes and businesses have evacuated near a popular vacation spot at a Montana lake as dozens of other blazes burned.

In Northern California, more than 1,000 firefighters were able to slow the growth of a nearly 5-square-mile wildfire overnight near the town of Oroville, an area already hard-hit by fire and a massive evacuation earlier this year caused by damage to sections of the nation’s tallest dam.

It was partially contained, but about 500 homes remained in its path. .

Fires also burned near Yosemite National Park, evacuating nearby towns and keeping a popular road into the park shut down. About 58 homes near the park were destroyed earlier this summer.