Wildfire bears down on Montana towns as West burns

LAME DEER, Mont: A wildfire bore down on rural southeastern Montana 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 across the sparsely-populated Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. Meanwhile, the Dixie Fire - which 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.