Western Wildfires' Slow Burn

Aided by relatively mild weather, hundreds of firefighters are making slow but steady progress against a wildfire feeding on an area of dense brush and timber that hadn't burned in nearly 50 years.

Hundreds of evacuees remained out of their homes because of that and other wildfires in the West.

The fire in the San Bernardino National Forest about 60 miles east of Los Angeles was 30 percent contained Sunday after charring about 1,350 acres, said Georgia Smith, a fire information officer with the U.S. Forest Service.

Temperatures were only in the upper 50s before dawn Sunday, following highs in the 90s Saturday, while humidity rose to above 50 percent, fire information officer Marc Stamer said. He said firefighters were racing to try to get as much of a perimeter line around the fire as they could before hot, dry weather returned.

At one point, the fire had threatened as many as 1,500 homes, prompting the evacuation of the 400 closest to the flames. Many of the residents forced to leave likely wouldn't be allowed to return before Monday, Stamer said.

"We're mentally prepared for at least two days," said one evacuee, Woody Andrews of Running Springs.

In all, about 1,000 people were displaced, Stamer said.

The fire started Friday about four miles from Highland, in an area where thousands of trees had been killed by Western pine bark beetles, said Karen Terrill, fire information officer for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

"The last time this area burned was 1956, so this is a lot of very dead, very dry material that's burning now, in addition to the bug kill area," she said.

In British Columbia, more than 4,200 people were kept from their homes as a 98-square mile fire pushed toward Kelowna. Another 15,000 remained on evacuation alert, told to be packed and ready to leave on short notice.

The fire has already destroyed about 240 homes Kelowna, a city of 100,000.

In Oregon, the town of Camp Sherman remained evacuated as two fires that had merged into an 89,000-acre complex burned nearby. Cooler weather and drizzling rain Sunday helped fire crews hold off the fire for the second day.

Camp Sherman is an old-time vacation and resort area, reports CBS News Correspondent Stephan Kaufman.

In north-central Washington state, residents of about 75 buildings in the Methow Valley were evacuated as a wildfire grew to about 15,000 acres in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forests. Flames had gotten to within about two miles of buildings. It was not clear how many people were evacuated.

"The acreage on this fire more than exceeds the city of Portland's land base, so it's a good-sized fire," said David Widmark of the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center.

The fire was only 5 percent contained, but it had started moving away from the roughly 250 structures that were threatened, said Greg Thayer, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman.

Firefighters in Montana faced strong wind and low humidity as they battled some 80 wildfires, most in the northwestern part of the state. The largest fire had burned more than 52,500 acres as it moved north into Glacier National Park.

Wildfires have blackened 2.9 million acres so far this year, compared to 6.4 million at the same time last year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center at Boise, Idaho.