From Oklahoma, through Utah, on to California and north through Washington state, a combination of dry hot weather, lightning strikes and tinder-dry vegetation are contributing to fires that threaten hundreds of people, their homes and animals including horses.
Wild fire lighting night sky
Throughout the West, dry hot weather, tinder-dry grass and brush, and lighting strikes are combining for conflagrations that send people, horses and animals fleeing for their lives.
Fire fighters are photographed leading horses to safety as families pile their cars with the important papers and possessions as they flee to safety.
Starting in early August, the wildfires in Oklahoma burned at least 52,000 acres, and destroyed at least 121 homes and businesses. In Stillwater, Oklahoma, at least five structures were burned due to grass fires, and animals living on horse farms have had to be let loose in order to escape the flames threatening the farms.
In Utah, a lightning-sparked fire consumed about 34 square miles, threatened a herd of wild horses and shut down the historic Pony Express Road in the state's western desert. On August 15, the Bureau of Land Management's field office in Salt Lake City lifted temporary closures of public land and roadways affected by the fire, saying fire officials had determined the public could safely enter the area again..
In Idaho, a firefighter was killed by a falling tree Sunday. Anne Veseth, a 20-year-old who was in her second season as a firefighter, died as she worked a fire near Orofino. Her older brother also is a wild-land firefighter in Idaho, where 12 blazes are burning
In California, up to 1,800 acres of the San Jacinto Mountains went up in flames leading to mandatory evacuations in the area as up to 500 firefighters using air tankers and helicopters battled to control the blaze.
In northeastern San Diego County, a cluster of lightning-sparked wild fires blanketed nearly 4 square miles, threatening electrical distribution lines that serve the communities of Borrego Springs, Warner Springs and Ranchita, some 50 miles northeast of downtown San Diego.
Fires across California have also affected some national parks with road and camp closures, including Lassen Volcanic National Park and Joshua Tree National Park.
A fast-moving wildfire in central Washington has burned at least 60 homes and forced hundreds of people to flee, threatening communities, sending up thick plumes of smoke and disrupting activity in national parks. Fire commanders estimate Washington blazes have burned at least 26,000 acres with one fire creeping to within six miles of Ellensburg, about 75 miles east of Seattle.
Near Cle Elum, Washington, property at a chimpanzee sanctuary was burned, although the seven chimps seemed bewildered by the smoke and the changes in their routine brought by the blaze that burned within a couple hundred feet of their building, according to a spokeswoman.
Fire fighters and officials throughout the country say that their biggest concern is the fact that rainfall, including snow pack, has been somewhere between 50 percent to 70 percent of normal.
As one fire official put it when faced with the tinder-dry landscape, 'It’s like lighting your fireplace with a blowtorch.'