LAME DEER, Mont. (AP) — A wildfire bore down on rural southeastern Montana towns Thursday as continuing hot, dry weather fanned the flames.
Several thousand people in Montana remained under evacuation orders as the Richard Spring Fire advanced across the sparsely-populated Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation.
Primed by heavy, swirling winds and hot temperatures, the Montana fire spread in multiple directions, torching trees and sending off embers that propelled the flames across the dry landscape.
The blaze began Sunday and winds gusting up to 56 miles per hour (90 kilometres per hour) caused it to explode across more than 260 square miles (670 square kilometers) by Thursday.
The fire had crept within about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) of the eastern edge of the evacuated town of Lame Deer, leaping over a highway where officials had hoped to stop it.
After a second fire ignited just west of the town and quickly spread, tribal officials late Wednesday urged residents who did not heed the initial evacuation order to flee. Busses were being brought in to move people to a school in the community of Busby, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) away.
Firefighters worked into early Thursday morning on hills around Lame Deer to keep the blaze from destroying houses, officials said.
There were no immediate damage reports about buildings.
Also ordered to leave were about 600 people in and around Ashland, a small town just outside the reservation. Local, state and federal firefighters were joined by ranchers using their own heavy equipment to carve out fire lines around houses.
Cooler weather and less wind was in the weather forecast for southeastern Montana Thursday, the National Weather Service said. That could give firefighters brief relief before a ridge of high pressure moves into the area and pumps temperatures into the 90s over the weekend.
