Fire in Sierra Nevada Nearly Contained : Forests: Evacuated residents have returned home. Twenty-six other blazes are still raging in Western states.

Firefighters on Tuesday had nearly contained an 8,000-acre brush fire in the central Sierra Nevada that had forced evacuation of mountain settlements but burned no homes. Around the West, 26 major wildfires that scorched 230,000 acres were still burning.

All 300 residents evacuated from Moccasin, Big Oak Flat and Ferndale over the weekend because of the Sierra fire were allowed to return home.

Authorities also reopened a six-mile stretch of California 120 near Yosemite National Park that had been closed since a campfire sparked the blaze Saturday. The blaze had cost nearly $3 million to fight as of Tuesday, California Department of Forestry spokeswoman Katherine Campbell said.

Meanwhile, a fire that had scorched 2,600 acres near the central coast in the Ventana Wilderness area of Los Padres National Forest was 80% contained. That fire, 17 miles west of King City in Monterey County, was sparked Saturday by spontaneous combustion in a shed, according to U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Juanita Freel.

Across the West, damage from this year’s wildfires is about 50,000 acres ahead of last year’s pace, according to officials at the Boise Interagency Fire Center.

More than 9,000 firefighters are battling the blazes in California, Washington, Idaho, Nevada and Oregon. Forecasts of more hot weather accompanied by gusty winds and lightning are expected to fan the biggest blazes in Wyoming, southern Oregon and Idaho.

“That could cause the fires to make a major run,” said an official at the fire center.

The worst fires are in Idaho, where a total of 120,000 acres is burning in range fires in the central part of the state and in mature timber forests in the Boise National Forest.

High winds are expected to worsen fires in rural areas. Six homes were lost in a fire Monday night near the town of Bellevue and a grasslands fire in the southeastern part of the state spread to 50,000 acres.

In Oregon, a 4,000-acre fire destroyed two homes and forced evacuations from 200 more outside the community of Rogue River. The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced late Tuesday that it had authorized spending up to $2 million to help fight the fire.

Eighty miles to the east, crews worked to encircle a fire that burned across 12,000 acres in the Winema National Forest. But afternoon winds blew the flames across fire lines, and Klamath County deputies went to 50 houses telling residents to evacuate.

Heavy smoke prevented firefighters from getting ahead of the blaze to build firebreaks, forcing firefighters to work on the flanks and rear of the blaze. A fleet of five air tankers and four helicopters dropped water and fire retardant on the fire’s leading edge.

Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts invoked the state’s Conflagration Act, authorizing the mobilization of firefighters statewide.

In northern Nevada near the Idaho line, a 20,000-acre wildfire forced the evacuation of 100 people in the old gold mining town of Jarbidge. The blaze dubbed the Coffee Pot Fire is the largest of several lightning-sparked blazes that have burned across more than 50,000 acres in Nevada since the weekend.