Two wildfires started by lightning had blackened more than 3,000 acres by Tuesday along the eastern Sierra Nevada, temporarily prompting the evacuation of a Marine Corps housing unit.
One fire broke out Monday and quickly spread across 900 acres. It erupted near the area where some 470 firefighters already were battling a 2,100-acre wildfire that started Friday in the region about 70 miles south of Reno, Nev.
The larger blaze was 60 percent contained and crews were pulled off it to attack the smaller fire, assisted by helicopters and airplanes.
Lower temperatures and higher humidity during the night helped firefighters build lines around 30 percent of the smaller fire, fire information officer Franklin Pemberton said Tuesday.
Monday’s fire began just behind a housing unit north of Coleville used by the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center near Sonora Pass.
Firefighters completed a backfire to provide a buffer between the fire and the Marine housing, and an evacuation order for the housing area had been lifted, Pemberton said.
Elsewhere:
- A lightning-caused wildfire about seven miles southwest of Payson, Ariz., had grown to an estimated 23,000 acres in rough terrain in the Tonto National Forest. About 20 buildings at ranches and other rural properties were north of the fire but weren’t immediately threatened, officials said.
- Shifting wind blew smoke from a 66,000-acre fire 50 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska, and other blazes toward the city’s suburbs, creating air quality concerns for some 82,000 people. Two other groups of backcountry fires had covered more than 200,000 acres each, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.