Arizona Fires Force 30,000 Out of Homes

Hundreds of homes have been destroyed, thousands of people evacuated and hundreds of thousands of hectares engulfed in some of the worst forest fires ever to hit the United States.

As flames threatened to wipe out a whole Arizona town, the state's governor said yesterday that the fire was "like a freight train coming at us".

The Arizona town of Show Low - named after a form of poker - was yesterday under threat from the worst fire in the state's history. More than 30,000 residents from the town and surrounding areas were evacuated and many were having to camp out in a football stadium, uncertain whether they would ever see their homes again.

National Guard troops have been patrolling Show Low, which looks like a ghost town, and local fire officials were resigned to the possibility of thousands of homes being lost.

"We can't set a fire truck at every house," said the local fire chief, Ben Owens. "If we're overrun, we'll pull out."

A total of 17 fires in the western US are being fought by thousands of forest service firefighters, city fire services drafted in to help them, and thousands of volunteers. National Guardsmen are helping to deal with a growing number of evacuees and abandoned properties.

Already this year more than 930,000 hectares (3,600 square miles) have burned across America. The National Interagency Fire Centre said: "Conditions have never been worse."

Two wildfires in Arizona merged yesterday, and have now burned about 120,000 hectares (nearly 500 square miles) of northern Arizona. "I cannot tell you how serious this is," said Arizona's governor, Jane Dee Hull, who has been watching the fires around Show Low. "This is like a freight train coming at us."

Plumes of smoke were reach ing 4,600 metres (15,000ft) into the sky as water-carrying helicopters and planes tried to keep the flames at bay. While thousands abandoned their homes, about 50 residents in the threatened area were refusing to leave.

The blazes in Arizona come in the wake of vast fires in Colorado. They have led local politicians to question whether the federal government is tackling the problem in the right way and using its resources wisely.

Ms Hull and fellow state officials have claimed that bureaucracy has hampered the state from clearing the dense undergrowth that helps the fires spread so swiftly.

Ms Hull said that President Bush had assured her that he would now declare Arizona a federal disaster area.

The fires are the result of recent hot weather in the western states, coupled with low humidity. While wildfires would occur naturally, they have been accelerated in recent years because people have moved deeper into wild areas, making organised burns more difficult to conduct.

Some of the current fires are believed to have been started deliberately. One of the latest ones was caused by a lost hiker firing a flare to attract the attention of rescuers.