It's just a charred neighbourhood

DARBY, (MONTANA), AUG. 9. Few homes remain in Ms. Judy Greene's charred neighbourhood. The Goldstein house, the Davis house, the Zikan house - all destroyed by fires that have singed huge swathes of land and trees across the western U.S.

``This thing is so powerful you just feel helpless,'' Ms. Greene( 67), said Tuesday. Her home remained in peril just kilometers away from the scenic Bitterroot Valley blazed where wildfires have scorched more than 124,500 acres. An estimated 500 to 800 homes have been evacuated, but Ms. Greene, her husband and son have decided to stay as long as they can.

This is the second fire Ms. Greene has experienced. In 1970, a wildfire destroyed her home in the Chatsworth section of Los Angeles. ``We lost everything but the clothes on our backs,'' she said.

Across the West, the story was the same; overworked and overwhelmed fire crews battling blazes that were igniting just as older fires were brought under control. More than 20,000 civilian and military firefighters had managed to contain 60 fires in the past week.

Sixty-six major fires were active on Tuesday and had blackened 866,000 acres in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. On Tuesday, the President, Mr. Bill Clinton, took a 40-minute aerial tour of the forest lands that have been charred by 66 fires in 11 states.

``It's so pretty here, isn't it?'' Mr. Clinton said, looking out a helicopter window over sections of the Payette National Forest in Idaho that were either green, slightly singed or completely charred. Then he took note of a large plume of smoke climbing into the sky and said, ``It's really eerie. ... It looks like a bomb going off.'' Altogether, more than 4 million acres of forest, brush and grass has burned this year, far more than by this same date in 1988, when large parts of Yellowstone National Park went up in smoke.

A 5,000-acre wildfire that closed Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado for the second time this summer was 40 per cent contained by evening, a park spokesman said. Full containment was predicted by Friday.

The blaze had moved past cliff dwellings on Monday and headed toward a research centre housing thousands of priceless Indian artifacts. In the Bitterroot Valley, fires had destroyed at least 73 buildings, including 51 homes and cabins.

- AP

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : International
Previous : U.S., Pak. open talks on extradition
Next     : Wahid to learn from criticism