The Nation - News from Aug. 23, 1988

Temperatures fell, the wind died down and the Army arrived, improving conditions for weary firefighters battling forest fires that have charred thousands of acres of Montana and Wyoming, especially in Yellowstone National Park. A first wave of 612 infantrymen from Ft. Lewis, Wash., landed at Bozeman, Mont., and headed for the 157,000-acre Clover Mist fire in Yellowstone’s northeastern corner. Soldiers were to help prevent the fire, one of about 10 in the park, from crossing into Montana’s Custer National Forest or commercial areas of Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest. About 3,000 firefighters were in Yellowstone. Elsewhere, reinforcements were called out in Idaho to help keep the 700-acre Eagle Bar fire away from a timber sale tract in the Payette National Forest.