(Reuters) - A out-of-control wildfire threatened to encroach on a mountain town in California's Lake Tahoe area on Wednesday, prompting road and campsite closures as fires blackened swathes of four states along the drought-stricken U.S. West Coast.
Hundreds of firefighters backed by water-dropped aircraft were toiling to keep the 16,543-acre (6,695-hectare) wind-whipped blaze from Markleeville, an area with about 250 residences south of Lake Tahoe that sits about three miles (4.8 km) from the fire's leading edge, as officials closed highways and campgrounds.
Although the fire has not progressed materially in the previous two days, residents were told to prepare for evacuation. One firefighter was injured due to heat.
"Vegetation is feeling the stress from over three years' cumulative drought and historically low snowpack in the mountains this past winter," according to fire-tracking website InciWeb, which pulls information from multiple agencies.
To the south, in the mountains east of Los Angeles, firefighters have expanded containment lines by 10 percent to 38 percent around an 18,875 acre-blaze (7,638-hectare) that erupted earlier this month, and slowed its growth, fire officials said.
Scores of additional wildfires were raging across parched areas up and down the U.S. West Coast, which is grappling with drought emergencies and record low snowpack.
In Alaska, a wildfire that grew by nearly 10,000 acres from the day prior to 33,000 acres had crept to within four miles of the tiny northeast river community of Tanana on Wednesday, where residents were told to leave their homes on Tuesday, the Division of Forestry said.
A spreading fire also threatened Nulato, another small community on the river a few hundred miles away, after residents fled the area on boat on Tuesday.
Altogether, authorities have called for several hundred people to be evacuated from those two fires.
Fairbanks was not threatened by fire, but heavy smoke from more than a dozen nearby fires reduced visibility to about eight blocks and residents woke up to layers of smoke ash reminiscent of a winter's first snowfall, officials said.
In Oregon, a fire in Cave Junction grew by about 300 acres from Tuesday to 5,340 acres but was about 50 percent contained.
Fire officials have enacted restrictions on using open fires and flammables in 16 counties as Governor Kate Brown declared a drought emergency for 20 of the state's 36 counties.
(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Lisa Lambert)
