Thousands Flee Flames in Glacier Park

Several thousand people streamed out of Glacier National Park on Thursday after a wildfire burned into the western half of the park and officials worried that conditions were ripe for more fires.

Wildfires have prompted officials to close most of the western half of Glacier -- widely considered one of the crown jewels of the national park system. The park covers more than 1 million acres in northwestern Montana near the Canadian border and is home to spectacular mountain views.

“The purpose of the evacuation is to make sure the fire doesn’t get behind people and they don’t have a way to get out of the park,” park information officer Punky Moore said.

Park spokeswoman Amy Vanderbilt said several thousand people were evacuated, including concession employees, landowners, campers and lodge guests.

Officials said two fires posed the biggest threat, including one that swelled to at least 6,000 acres Thursday morning and a second estimated at nearly 2,000 acres, officials said. The smaller blaze prompted Thursday’s evacuations.

In Idaho, residents mourned the deaths of Jeff Allen, 24, and Shane Heath, 22, who were overrun by flames after they had rappelled to the ground to fight a blaze in the Salmon-Challis National Forest.

The fire, about 130 miles south of Missoula, Mont., was caused by lightning and first reported Sunday. High temperatures and wind blew it up from 120 acres to about 1,000, officials said.

Another Idaho blaze grew to 14,000 acres in the Boise National Forest and was about eight miles from the small town of Atlanta on Thursday.

Isolated summer cabins were evacuated, and as many as 80 residences are considered threatened.

In Wyoming, firefighters dug in for a sixth day in hopes of slowing a wildfire that threatened dozens of seasonal homes in the Big Horn Mountains of the north-central part of the state.

A 122,000-acre cluster of fires in eastern Montana remained the biggest in the state, but officials said they were close to containing them.

The National Interagency Fire Center said there were 45 large fires burning in the West, with 376,564 acres of active wildfires.

Other states with large fires included Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Ne- vada, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Washing- ton.