Wildfires

Wildfires - California, USA

Wildfires forced thousands to flee their homes across the U.S. West during a sweltering, smoke-shrouded holiday weekend of record heat.

The fires Sunday caused evacuations in Glacier National Park in Montana and many other parts of the West; compelled crews to rescue about 140 hikers who had spent the night in the woods after fire broke out along the popular Columbia River Gorge Trail in Oregon; and led firefighters to step up efforts to protect a 2,700-year-old grove of giant sequoia encroached by flames near Yosemite National Park in California.

A sudden gusty series of rainstorms allowed Los Angeles, however, to cancel evacuation orders for a wildfire that the mayor called the largest in the city's history and sent beach umbrellas and toy shovels bouncing down Southern California beaches late Sunday.

Fires burning up and down the Sierra Nevada and further to the northwest cast an eerie yellow and gray haze over much of California. Much of the state was under alerts because of poor air quality.

California authorities ordered evacuations for a small town Sunday in one of the wildfires, a blaze that has burned 9 square miles near Yosemite.