BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Wildfires in Montana have exploded in size, triggering evacuations and destroying an unknown number of homes as furious winds stoked the blazes and caused a firefighting helicopter to crash-land, officials said Wednesday.
In the Big Belt Mountains east of Townsend, firefighters pulled back from a fire burning in a heavily timbered canyon and took refuge in safety zones when the blaze began moving so fast and hot that it became unsafe to try to stop it, said Erin Fryer with the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest.
The fire burning in timber and grass in the Deep Creek area grew overnight from less than 1 square mile (3 square kilometers) to more than 3 square miles (8 square kilometers). An unknown number of structures were destroyed, Fryer said.
A state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation fire helicopter crash-landed in the heavy winds, toppled over and caught fire. The five people aboard got out safely and were taken to hospitals for minor injuries before being released Tuesday night, agency spokesperson Paige Cohn said.
A subdivision with about 50 to 100 houses and cabins was evacuated. The forward edge of the blaze was still several miles away from the Grassy Mountain subdivision Wednesday, but Fryer said erratic winds in the forecast could make it harder to contain the fire.
The sudden ramping up of what started as a relatively quiet fire season came as record-high, triple-digit temperatures on Monday and Tuesday baked much of Montana and portions of northern Wyoming.
Officials hoped an expected break in the hot weather would bolster efforts to control the fires but warned they could keep growing and that houses and other property remained in peril.
A fire burning south of the tourist town of Red Lodge near Yellowstone National Park and the state line with Wyoming grew from about 3 square miles (8 square kilometers) to more than 31 square miles (85 square kilometers) by Wednesday, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of houses in the path of the blaze, fire spokesperson Amy Hyfield said.
The fire that started Sunday in the Robertson Draw area was threatening 450 homes and hundreds more buildings and other infrastructure, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said. The agency on Wednesday deemed the fire a major disaster because of the amount of damage it could cause.
Hyfield said fire crews were deployed to protect houses, but it was not immediately known if any burned. No injuries were reported.
The evacuation included U.S. Forest Service campgrounds and cabins on private land within the forest south of Red Lodge.
Beartooth Pass — a highway that leads to Yellowstone National Park — remained open.
On the Crow Reservation, officials reported a new fire in the Bighorn Mountains near the Montana-Wyoming border. The fire was burning in steeply sided Little Bull Elk Canyon, with flames up to 150 feet (46 meters) high that threatened to spread the blaze rapidly, officials said.
A fire 16 miles (26 kilometers) southwest of Ashland in southeast Montana threatened an unspecified number of homes and had burned 1 square miles (3 square kilometers).
