Local emergency authorities drafted in help from neighboring states, as the blaze spread to cover more than 7,120 acres (2,881 hectares) near the picturesque city of Boulder, while officials said more people might have to be evacuated.

"The fire is zero-percent contained," said fire commander Don Whittemore as the sun set Tuesday on the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

Local authorities said 92 structures, including homes, have been destroyed, but that no injuries have been reported.

"We've literally exhausted our resources," said Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle, adding that federal firefighters were being dispatched to the area from Wyoming and New Mexico.

The blaze erupted Monday in Fourmile Canyon in Boulder County north of the state capital Denver, fueled by baking heat and dry conditions.

Pelle, who toured the affected area with Colorado Governor Bill Ritter during the day Tuesday, said nine volunteer firefighters who were battling the blaze had lost their homes.

Residents already evacuated were not being allowed back in to the area, he added.

"Pray for rain," Pelle said, according to the Denver Post.

Air tankers dropped fire retardant over the area to help douse the flames, and officials were heartened that light winds were forecast down sharply from the 45 mile per hour (72 kilometer per hour) winds that whipped up flames on Monday.

Fire activity lessened early in the day when an air inversion laid a blanket on the fire, but once that lifted, the flames grew, Pelle said.

Ritter declared a state of emergency for the area and pledged five million dollars to fire fighting activities in what are rugged areas.

Speaking to CNN, Ritter acknowledged that the blaze was unpredictable.

"We have people coming in from around other parts of the country and we're doing everything we can to commit resources to it but it's a pretty volatile situation," he said.

The cause of the fire has not been determined.

Colorado media reported on several people who stayed with their homes despite evacuation orders, or who suddenly found themselves threatened and were lucky to escape with their lives.

"I literally got out a minute before my house was engulfed in flames," Leif Steiner told Boulder's daily Camera. "Embers were landing on me as I left."

earlier related report
Fires flare up as Russia pledges better forest protection
Moscow (AFP) Sept 8, 2010 - Forest fires flared again in Russia on Wednesday as President Dmitry Medvedev demanded better protection for the country's prized forests to avoid a repeat of this summer's disaster.

Fresh fires destroyed more than 400 houses in the Siberian region of Altai, officials said, as flames spread across the region's border with the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan.

"The village of Nikolayevka has been entirely taken by the flames. According to preliminary information, 433 houses burned down," emergency ministry spokeswoman Irina Andryanova was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.

All 1,000 residents of the village were safely evacuated, the spokeswoman said.

An evacuation was underway in the village of Bastan, where flames had already destroyed four houses, she said.

"Three fires from Kazakhstan are heading towards the regions of Altai and Novosibirsk," RIA Novosti quoted a local emegency official in Altai as saying.

Authorities were sending fire-fighting aircraft -- two planes and four helicopters -- to help extinguish the flames, which at one stage were covering 11 kilometres (seven miles) in a single hour, emergencies ministry spokeswoman Olesya Kukuyeva told AFP.

One person died trying to put out the fire in Kazakhstan's Pavlodar region, an official with the country's emergencies ministry told AFP.

The fresh fire outbreak comes after Russia battled hundreds of blazes earlier this year, some dangerously close to its top nuclear research centre in Sarov.

Environmentalists last month accused the authorities of intentionally under-reporting the scale of the disaster, saying the fires had cost the country 300 billion dollars (381 billion euros), citing estimates based on the market value of timber and the cost of reforestation.

Environmental groups including WWF and Greenpeace said the fires wreaked damage on such a colossal scale due to forestry legislation and reforms passed since the start of Vladimir Putin's 2000-2008 presidency when he introduced a new Forest Code.

Those reforms turned Russia's prized forests into a virtual no-man's land, environmentalists said, as they led to the sacking of some 150,000 forestry officials, including forest rangers.

The Kremlin appeared to have taken notice of at least some of those complaints as President Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday that a billion hectares (2.5 billion acres) of forest land had been left without state protection and tasked officials with amending the Forest Code.

"The past summer has shown that the current legislation and forest management are not up to the mark," the Kremlin said in a statement.

This summer Russia endured an unprecedented heatwave when raging wildfires and burning peat bogs around Moscow choked the capital for days.

Around 500 forestry officials in the Moscow region were fired just before the fires broke out in the region, a spokeswoman for the region's Public Chamber, Maria Yelanova, told AFP on Wednesday.

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