Firefighters in Utah spend the night battling battle with flames
An extra 100 firefighters were dispatched to the wildfire, bringing the total to 800, with support from five air tankers. The blaze was moving north through the Dixie National Forest west of Interstate 15, the main thoroughfare between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City.
"It has the potential to get up and make another run," said Rowdy Muir, an incident commander with the Great Basin Fire Management Team. Forecasts were calling Tuesday for more high winds and dry lightning.
Most of New Harmony, about 30 miles northwest of St. George in Utah's southwest corner, was evacuated Monday night, with about 100 residents leaving 27 homes. Crews worked in the neighborhoods past midnight, drawing water from a local reservoir to knock back the flames.
The blaze was running especially hot Monday evening, when it raced northward six miles in two hours under high winds, Muir said.
But by Tuesday morning, the only damage was melted siding on one house. Some residents were being allowed to return to homes in part of town farthest away from the flames.
Elsewhere in southwest Utah, an early morning lightning storm started two new wildfires. The tiny town of Motoqua, a tiny cluster of 12 homes about 25 miles west of St. George, was placed under a one-hour evacuation order as flames moved to within 1 1/2 miles of city limits.
Emergency officials said they were working on an evacuation plan for the town's 30 residents.
More lightning and windy weather were forecast for the region.
Farther south, the Westside Complex Fire near St. George, which began almost a week ago as five smaller blazes and then grew into one, was 90 percent contained. The 68,264-acres fire was expected to be fully contained by Tuesday night, said fire spokesman Dave Olson.
The National Interagency Fire Center said Tuesday that 21 large fires were burning on more than 769,000 acres in Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.
In Nevada, a 33,500-acre wildfire that had blanketed Las Vegas with smoke and prompted the evacuation of a Boy Scout camp was nearing containment. "We're basically in a mop-up mode now," fire information officer Joe Colwell said of the blaze southwest of Las Vegas.
Arizona's biggest blaze, about 30 miles north of Phoenix, had grown to 124,000 acres Tuesday, but it was burning away from populated areas that had been threatened by the lightning-sparked fire. It was 25 percent contained, fire officials said.
In Southern California, a brush fire swept across 800 acres in the western Antelope Valley on Monday, destroying one building and forcing some residents to evacuate before firefighters contained it.
The fire broke out in the high desert 45 miles north of Los Angeles while firefighters in the Mojave National Preserve near the Nevada line mopped up a six-day-old blaze that charred more than 70,736 acres.
On the Net:
National Interagency Fire Center: www.nifc.gov/
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