Wildfires, Evacuations Unabated

Aug. 21 -- The battle against the wildfires in the West rages on.

About 30 of the most significant fires have burned some 600,000acres in Montana, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. More than one-third of that land is in the BitterrootValley, where hundreds of evacuees remained out of their homes.

A blaze between Helena and Bozeman remained a major challengefor firefighters. Estimates of the size ranged 60,000 to100,000 acres, said Kimberly Landl, a Helena National Forestspokeswoman.

On Sunday, utility crews completed repairs to a major power linethat carries electricity to the West Coast. That line and its twinshut down automatically when the fire burned underneath them, butservice was unaffected.

There are 87 major fires burning today in Arizona, California,Florida, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington,and Wyoming, according to the fire center. They have blackened a total of about 1.3 million acres.

Tender-Footed Bear

Fifty years after firefighters rescued abear from a New Mexico wildfire and named it Smokey Bear, a smallcub has emerged burned but alive from the blazes that have charredforest and range land across Montana.

The cub was “skin and bones,” said Joe Jacquith, the statewildlife warden who rescued the animal from the fire-ravagedBitterroot National Forest. He said the cub will eventually bereleased into the wild.

In Hamilton, the black bear, who was not given a name, was fed dog food as he rested at a veterinary clinic, Jacquith said. He hadset a trap for the young animal after a resident told him of the cub’s plight.

The cub had apparently gotten water from a creek and meat fromthe carcass of a burned deer, Jacquith said. “He’ll be a littletender-footed for awhile, but he should be fine,” he said.

In 1950, a bear rescued by firefighters in the Lincoln NationalForest near Capitan, N.M., was named Smokey Bear and became thenational fire-prevention mascot. That bear died in 1976.