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Fire traps Grand Canyon tourists
27/06/2006 10:48 - (SA)
Reno - Hundreds of tourists and workers have been stranded in the Grand Canyon National Park as lightning-sparked wildfires continue to spread across parts of the US.
A 12 400-hectare wildfire north of the park jumped the only highway leading to the remote North Rim, closing the road and marooning hundreds of tourists and workers.
With the fire burning national forest land about 48km from the Grand Canyon National Park, officials said no one was in any danger.
The fire grew by 6 880 hectares on Monday, but had spread even faster on Sunday, aided by high temperatures, winds and low humidity.
Nearly 1 000 stranded
With the only highway leading off the North Rim closed by fire since late on Sunday, an estimated 800 tourists and 150 employees were stranded at the park's lodge, cabins and campgrounds, said Leah McGinnis, a park spokesperson.
Rangers went out on trails to notify backpackers, she said.
Trees fell on the highway, which was expected to remain closed until at least Tuesday, but park officials said the campgrounds and resorts where tourists are staying have enough supplies for several days.
Nevada fires
Lightning-sparked wildfires burned across more than 20 000 hectares of northern Nevada, closing Interstate 80 for a second day, forcing evacuations in some rural areas and even claiming most of the training grounds at a state fire academy.
At least a half-dozen new fires were spotted around the Reno and Carson City area after another round of thunderstorms packing lightning rolled through the area on Monday.
Nearly 1 000 firefighters were fighting more than two dozen blazes from the heavily timbered western front of the Sierra Nevada near Reno to the sage- and grass-filled rangeland near Elko, 483km east.
Evacuations
Nevada officials ordered evacuations in two rural communities near Elko and flames burned within a quarter mile of homes northwest of Reno, but no injuries were reported and no homes faced immediate threat.
The state's biggest fire on Monday surpassed 16 000 hectares about 32km west of Elko near Carlin, where the University of Nevada Fire Science Academy is located along I-80.
Flames burned 140 hectares of the training grounds on the 170-hectare campus and came within several hundred metres of the main academy building, said Denise Baclawski, the academy's executive director.
Fifteen students were at the academy, learning about wildland fires, but they left the firefighting chores to staff, Baclawski said.
"We do a lot of real-life fire training, but we never expected this," Baclawski said.
"All night long we had staff members work to protect the facility."
Fires blacken 1.3 million hectares
Elsewhere, crews continued to battle a 1 280-hectare blaze burning 1.6km west of the northern New Mexico town of Gallina that forced the evacuation of residents of 120 homes in three rural subdivisions.
As of Monday, wildfires around the United States had blackened 1.3 million hectares this year, compared with 500 000 hectares on average at this point in the fire season, the National Interagency Fire Centre reported. However, much of this resulted from huge grass fires in Texas and Oklahoma this spring, not from forest fires.
- AP
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