Flames Threaten Glacier Park Headquarters, Town

Firefighters bulldozed an old road Saturday in an effort to protect the town and the Glacier National Park headquarters complex from a spreading wildfire.

West Glacier will be evacuated if the fire moves another mile, to within three miles of town, fire information officer Andy Williams said. The town has some 250 permanent residents and grows to about 400 in summer.

Three wildfires in Glacier National Park already had chased away thousands of visitors and blackened more than 40,000 acres. One fire, in the northwest portion of Glacier, destroyed six houses.

In Arizona, a helicopter dropping off a crew of elite firefighters crashed about 175 miles northeast of Phoenix on Saturday morning, killing two people and seriously injuring the two others on board, officials said.

The identities of the two who died were not immediately known, but one was the pilot, said Mike Todd, a spokesman for Native Air Ambulance.

The contract helicopter was taking a crew from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to begin an initial attack on a fire in the Aspen Ridge area, said Margo Whitt, a fire information officer.

On Friday, a helicopter pilot was killed when his aircraft crashed while fighting a wildfire in northeastern Washington state. Randall Harmon, 44, of Grants Pass, Ore., was the only occupant of the helicopter, which crashed on the Colville Indian Reservation, fire spokesman Nick Mickel said.

The fire Harmon was fighting had burned about 2,200 acres and was 70% contained Saturday, authorities said.

In Idaho, scores of firefighters attended a memorial service Saturday for Jeff Allen, 24, who was overtaken by flames after he and a co-worker rappelled from a helicopter to fight a blaze in the Salmon-Challis National Forest.

Colorado firefighters were battling wildfires that had covered about 11,000 acres, including a lightning-caused blaze that broke out Friday northwest of Fort Collins and forced the evacuation of 15 homes.

In north-central Washington, a 64,000-acre blaze was four to six miles west of Loomis State Forest. Both the Loomis fire in Washington and Montana’s Glacier fire were heading toward Canada. The Loomis fire was within four miles of the border, and U.S. fire managers have met with their Canadian counterparts to discuss strategy should the blaze cross into British Columbia.