MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Nearly 60 major wildfires are now burning in the United States, most of them west of the Mississippi. Already, total acreage consumed surpasses 3 million acres that was blackened in 1996. CNN's Shelly Walcott has more.</s>SHELLY WALCOTT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park to California's Sequoia National Forest, the story this summer is the same. Wildfire, like this one on the Fort Apache Indian reservation in eastern Arizona. Firefighters have been able to return to the fire lines after being driven away by strong winds and flames on Friday.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of power, a lot of heat. People think that what you see on TV is nothing. You think the fire is not hot. But it's got a whole lot of power. And when you stand here, you feel the heat. And some of us get closer than that.</s>WALCOTT: The fire has swept across at least 8,000 acres. Arizona officials say they hope to have it under control by Tuesday. In Utah, firefighters are battling dozens of wildfires spread over more than 35,000 acres. Visitors are being kept out of Utah's Provo Canyon where controlled burns are planned to keep the flames away from residential areas. In California, several firefighters have been injured trying to control a massive wildfire in the Sequoia National Forest. This abandoned Boy Scout lodge was in the a path of the flames, which have consumed more than 37,000 acres and continue to threaten a small Sierra Nevada town.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Resources are trickling in right now. There's back orders for crews and aircraft all over the state, in fact all over the western United States. And we're not anticipating getting a lot of reinforcement soon.</s>WALCOTT: Fire crews are stretched thin across the west as they battle fires in Idaho, Montana, Washington and Colorado. Federal fire management officials say almost three million acres of the United States have gone up in smoke this summer, which is shaping up to be the worst fire season in five years. Shelly Walcott, CNN.
Wildfires Rage Across Western U.S.