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Morning News

Western Wildfires: Wind Whips Up Fires in Hamilton, Montana

Aired August 24, 2000 - 10:07 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: To the latest on those Western U.S. wildfires, and those blazes that are now burning some 1.4 million acres of land.

CNN's Greg Lefevre still in Montana now, the state hardest hit by these fires. He is live in the town of Hamilton with us this morning.

Hello.

GREG LEFEVRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Bill, it has been a scary night and a scary morning here in Hamilton, Montana. The whole Bitterroot Valley is a little bit on edge this morning. It got windy last night. A front blew through here. That caused the fire troops to be roused at 2:00 this morning to rush out to the lines at the Scalpopel (ph) fire.

Early this morning, at a dawn briefing, fire bosses here expressed a lot of concern about the danger posed to the firefighters by these wind-whipped width fires that are now raging up above us in the canyons.

The big, big worry here is that they can't see very much of the fire. They can't fly, because the helicopters are grounded right now, because the inversion layer has kept the smoke levels way down.

Some of the visibility has been drastically reduced up in the canyons to something less than half a mile. That makes it pretty tough to map the fire. The firefighters should know here, in about the next hour or so, just how large these blazes have come.

We do know that the Blodgett fire west of here advanced about a half a mile on one front.

Already, this fire here, the Scalpopel (ph) fire, has burned 54,700 acres. There are 644 people on the lines of this fire. That's not nearly enough.

The Canadians are running this fire because the U.S. has run out of resources. They just don't have enough people to fight all the fires here in the West.

And, Bill, I got to close with one quick note. The temperature here has been changing radically this week. Just a few days ago, it was 39 degrees here in the morning. This morning, it is 71 degrees. And for firefighters, that's just bad news.

Bill, back to you.

HEMMER: Indeed, it is. Greg, also, throughout this week and last week even, there were major steps taken to keep people out of certain areas and off certain land. Are those rules being followed? And is there any resistance to this at this time?

LEFEVRE: The resistance, if any, has really been very minor. These people -- the residents here have placed a great deal of trust in the National Guard to keep their homes secure, and in the firefighters to keep the homes from being burned. And all across Montana we understand that the structure loss is somewhere in the 170 range. And when you consider the huge numbers of fires here, that's actually a very low toll -- Bill.

HEMMER: Quickly, again, Greg, you mentioned the warmer weather. Does that also portend that more of those storms and lightning strikes may roll in as well?

LEFEVRE: Absolutely. A front blew through here last night, about 2:00 this morning. They're expecting a second one at about 3:00 or 4:00 this afternoon. That means bad news for the firefighters. It's dry lightning. It may cause new fires, the wind picks up. And that will advance the fires that are already burning.

HEMMER: Can't catch a break. Greg Lefevre, live there in Hamilton, Montana with us today.

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