Wildfire bears down on Montana towns as West burns

A burnt truck next to a property that was destroyed by the Dixie Fire in Greenville. Pic/AFP

A wildfire bore down on rural southeastern towns Thursday as continuing hot, dry weather throughout the West drove flames through more than a dozen states.

Several thousand people remained under evacuation orders as the Richard Spring Fire advanced toward the sparsely-populated Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation.

Meanwhile, the Dixie Fire, hich started July 13 and is the largest wildfire burning in the nation, threatened a dozen small communities in the northern Sierra Nevada even though its southern end was mostly corralled by fire lines.

The Montana blaze, which was only 15% surrounded, began Sunday and powerful gusts caused it to explode across more than 230 square miles (600 square kilometers).

More than 100 large wildfires in the American West come as parts of Europe and even Africa are also burning. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday described the devastating wildfires that burned across the country for more than a week as the greatest ecological catastrophe Greece had seen in decades.

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