Yosemite fire growing at alarming rate

Updated at 3:41 p.m. ET

FRESNO, Calif. A Northern California wildfire raging out of control on Friday grew to more than three-times the size of the city of San Francisco as it spread inside the border of Yosemite National Park.

The flames have also forced the evacuations of hundreds from homes.

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesman Daniel Berlant said Friday the blaze had grown from 99 square miles to more than 165 square miles and was only 2 percent contained.

Berlant said the fire threatens about 4,500 residences.

"Most of the fire activity is pushing to the east right into Yosemite," Berlant said.

While the park remains open, the blaze has caused the closure of a 4-mile stretch of State Route 120, one of three entrances into Yosemite on the west side. Yosemite can still be accessed via state Routes 140 and 41 from the west, as well as State Route 120 from the east side.

Within the park, the blaze is burning on about 17 square miles in a remote area around Lake Eleanor, about 4 miles northwest of Hetch Hetchy reservoir, Yosemite spokeswoman Kari Cobb said.

Backcountry permits are required to hike in that area, Cobb said, and the park is no longer issuing those and has contacted every person who had received a permit to go there. Two roads that lead into the area -- Hetch Hetchy Road and Eleanor Road -- have been closed. Hodgdon Meadow Campground, which is near the park's west entrance via Route 120 has also been closed, its campers relocated to other areas.

"We don't have anybody we know of in that area based on the permits we have out now," she said.

The fire is not threatening Yosemite Valley, she said. It's burning more than 20 miles from the Valley, where skies are "crystal clear" and there's no sign of smoke, Cobb said.

"Right now there are no closures and no visitor services are being affected in the park," Cobb said. "We just have to take one day at a time depending on fire activity."

Officials also have advised voluntary evacuations of more than a thousand other homes, several organized camps and at least two campgrounds in the area outside the park's boundary. More homes, businesses and hotels are threatened in nearby Groveland, a community of 600 about 5 miles from the fire and 25 miles from the entrance of Yosemite.

Dry brush, oak and pine have fueled the fire as investigators continue to examine how it all began.

Crews aided by the California National Guard worked in the air and on the ground creating fire lines to halt its progress.

"It's a monster," said Bentley. "It's beating us up right at the moment. We're fighting this fire very, very hard."

With lightning in the forecast for Friday, Janes reports, it remains an uphill battle.

"Usually during summer, it's swamped with tourists, you can't find parking downtown," said Christina Wilkinson, who runs Groveland's social media pages and lives in Pine Mountain Lake. "Now, the streets are empty. All we see is firefighters, emergency personnel and fire trucks."

Though Wilkinson said she and her husband are staying put -- for now -- many area businesses have closed and people who had vacation rental homes are cancelling plans, local business owners said.

"This fire, it's killing our financial picture," said Corinna Loh, whose family owns the still-open Iron Door Saloon and Grill in Groveland. "This is our high season and it has gone to nothing, we're really hurting."

Loh said most of her employees have left town. And the family's Spinning Wheel Ranch, where they rent cabins to tourists, has also been evacuated because it's directly in the line of fire. Two outbuildings have burned at the ranch, Loh said, and she still has no word whether the house and cabins survived.

"We're all just standing on eggshells, waiting," Loh said.

The governor's emergency declaration finding "conditions of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property" frees up funds and firefighting resources and helps Tuolumne County in seeking federal disaster relief.

The Yosemite County Tourism Bureau based in Mariposa has been helping tourists displaced by the fire to find new accommodations in other park-area towns, said director Terry Selk.

The blaze is among 55 large fires burning nationwide.

For rockers Huey Lewis and the News, smoke from the massive Sun Valley, Idaho, wildfire known as "the Beast" had band members who famously worried about the heart of rock and roll worrying about their lungs.

They canceled their show, as did the novelists, poets and journalists who convene in this vacation region each summer for a writer's convention. Meanwhile, squadrons of private aircraft whisked the affluent off to locales with cleaner air.

With its mountain backdrop, Sun Valley is normally a playground for the rich, the famous, for super-fit pursuers of outdoor sports or the Big Wood River's feisty brook trout. To many, it's heaven. But "the Beast" has caused disruptions in the sun-basking, fun-loving lifestyle, and the economy.

"This is the worst I've seen it," said Brad Wood, who helps run a shop that rents bikes at the posh Sun Valley Lodge. Wood said he's sent four employees home until business picks up: On Thursday, only five of the 350 bikes they rent were out.

Meanwhile, five wildfires have burned about 18 square miles of mostly remote areas of Yellowstone National Park on the 25th anniversary of the infamous 1988 fires that burned more than 1,200 square miles inside Yellowstone, or more than a third of the park.

This summer's fires haven't been anywhere near that disruptive. The biggest fire in Yellowstone, one that has burned about 12 square miles in the Hayden Valley area, for a time Tuesday closed the road that follows the Yellowstone River between Fishing Bridge and Canyon Village. By Wednesday, the road had reopened. Later that day, half an inch of rain fell on the fire.

Idaho's Beaver Creek Fire is finally nearing containment, as firefighters take advantage of favorable weather to corral it up against an area burned by another large blaze in 2007. But it will continue to smoke for weeks.

More than just torching sage, high-desert grassland and trees, however, its impact has scorched the local economy.

Todd Van Bramer, who manages fly fishing guides at Silver Creek Outfitters in nearby Ketchum, said he's lost 70 percent of his normal business.

"We have a lot of customers who can go anywhere they want to," he said. "They don't have to come to Idaho if it's burning, they can go to Montana, Colorado or Wyoming at the drop of a hat."

The air is now much less smoky than it was during the height of the fire, but the smoke continues to cast a shadow over the economy.

At the airport in Hailey, just south of here, regional carrier Sky West has been forced to divert many morning flights to Twin Falls, about 100 miles away, because cooler morning temperatures mean smoke often loiters on the valley floor until afternoon breezes push it away.

And those planes are much emptier than an ordinary mid-August, said Rick Baird, manager at Friedman Memorial Airport.

The Sun Valley Lodge, built in 1936 by the Union Pacific Railroad as America's first destination resort, is bearing the brunt of disruption.

A writer's conference that was to have featured speakers including journalist Peter Bergen and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Liaquat Ahamed was canceled, emptying rooms by the dozen. Guests who cancel are getting refunds, said Jack Sibbach, a resort spokesman.

"It's quite an economic hit on us," he said.

Businesses like The Elephant's Perch sports store in Ketchum have had plenty of time to devote to the local firefighters who have ordered heavy new boots. But it's not adding much to the bottom line.

"These guys are getting the boots at our cost," said Sam Elmes, a sales clerk. "They did a great job protecting us."

For the first time in 37 years, a charitable golf tournament started by the late baseball Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew was scratched. There are "hundreds of firefighters risking their lives in the woods. We're not going to be playing golf while they're doing that," said Georgie Fenton, its director.

For some locals, however, ditching events didn't seem an option.

Ketchum resident Spooky Taft had been planning her daughter's wedding for a year; about 220 guests were coming. Many were in the air even as the flames approached town. The string quartet was evacuated. And with embers aloft, Taft decided the horse-drawn carriage was a no-go, too.

But the wedding went forward. "We pulled it off, against all odds," Taft said.