Residents of rustic village dig in despite mandatory evacuation order

RIDGECREST, Calif. - Residents of a rustic mountain village dug in their heels Saturday and ignored an evacuation order, staying with their homes and livestock even as smoke and flames from a 37,500-acre fire filled the sky.

With daytime temperatures in the 90s and wind hitting 20 mph, firefighters had contained only about 10 percent of the blaze in the rugged Sierra Nevada and predicted they wouldn't get it fully contained until Aug. 10.

The blaze had charred 37,000 acres of pine forest and brush just east of the Sequoia National Forest, destroying two outbuildings and an abandoned Boy Scout lodge. No homes had burned.

Firefighters also spent their weekend on the fire lines elsewhere across the West in what has become the nation's worst fire season since 1996.

The fire in the Sierra started in a meadow on July 22 and took off Thursday, nearly doubling to 25,000 acres. It moved fast again Friday, burning 12,000 more acres in 12 hours. The cause had not been determined.

Authorities issued a mandatory evacuation order Thursday for the village of Kennedy Meadows but residents opted to stay in the isolated area, where generators are the only source of electricity and telephone service was installed less than a year ago.

''Usually we get some people to change their mind (when evacuation orders are issued), but in this case we really haven't,'' said Capt. Tomas Patlan of the Kern County Fire Department. ''That group out there is pretty hearty. It's a pioneering spirit that's very strong and they just refuse to leave.''

People who defy the order are warned that law enforcement can no longer protect them, Patlan said.

On Friday, firefighters bulldozed a trench on one side of the village and then set a backfire in the dry vegetation to create a large fire break.

''It looked like napalm,'' part-time resident Dave Adams said of the backfire as he helped serve coffee Saturday at Grumpy Bear's Restaurant.

Jan Gant, who owns the log cabin-style restaurant, was busy serving breakfast Saturday morning and said she never had time to evacuate.

''I was feeding the firefighters,'' she said. ''The closer the fire got, the faster I cooked.''

The community has 43 full-time residents, and numerous weekend homes.

Eight firefighters had been injured. One was taken to a burn center in Los Angeles, 160 miles to the south, with first- and second-degree burns on one arm.

Elsewhere in the West, crews fighting a huge blaze in Idaho placed protective wrapping on historic buildings in the Salmon-Challis National Forest, including the Leesburg gold mining town, one of the state's first settlements.

That fire near the Montana state line was moving about a mile a day and had charred 60,000 acres.

Another Idaho fire, which burned onto the grounds of the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, was contained at 30,000 acres.

An enormous range fire in northeastern Nevada raged largely unchecked Saturday, having charred at least 54,000 acres, and officials warned of gusty wind and triple-digit temperatures.

''The extreme danger existing in Nevada through this weekend cannot be underestimated,'' said Nevada state Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey.

Crews in Utah worked Saturday to put out dozens of wildfires that had blackened about 35,000 acres. Flames of a 1,000-acre blaze about 31 miles south of Salt Lake City, in South Fork and Bear Canyon, were within sight of several homes.

Two big fires in eastern Washington were virtually neutralized. One, a 9,500-acre fire in Okanogan County, had destroyed 37 homes since last weekend.

Colorado fire crews had been aided by slightly cooler, wetter weather as they made progress against several fires. Firefighters were completing a line around the 23,000-acre blaze in Mesa Verde National Park.

Calmer wind early Saturday allowed firefighters to return to the lines of an 8,000-acre blaze on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in eastern Arizona. Gusty wind on Friday swept flames through one firefighters' camp.

''The winds really took us to task,'' said spokeswoman Chadeen Palmer.

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