LOS ANGELES, June 11: Up to 40,000 were on Monday poised to evacuate their homes on the edge of the US city of Denver as a wildfire that has burned more than 30,400 hectares threatened the area, officials said.

Some 6,000 homes to the south-

west of Denver had already been evacuated on Monday as the blaze spread dramatically through the day, fanned by strong winds, with smoke causing darkness to descend early on the Colorado city.

“Up to 40,000 other people in the area have been instructed to be on standby to evacuate their homes if the situation worsens, which it might well,” said Trish Asplend of the United States Forest Service.

“The governor (of the state) has now warned the population that the fire, which is currently blowing towards the city, will have burned up to 100,000 acres by tomorrow (Tuesday),” she added.

Winds of 40-48 kilometres per hour were continuing to push the gigantic blaze — which was less than 97 kilometres from Denver on Monday — towards the smoke-filled city, she said.

Some 1,520 firefighters were on the scene, after pouring in from all over Colorado and from neighbouring states, fighting the blaze, one of seven that are ravaging the western US state.

Tanker planes and helicopters were bombing the blaze with fire retardants and water in a bid to save property and lives.

“The main priority now is public safety, and then of course suppression of the fire,” Asplend said, adding that a probe was underway to trace campers who are believed to have sparked the blaze with an illegal camp fire.

A health alert was imposed over the state earlier Monday as seven wildfires roared across it, sending clouds of acrid smoke all across the region.

The second biggest fire was the most destructive in terms of property, consuming 3,035 hectares and burning 23 houses near the town of Glenwood Springs, 240kms west of Denver.

Some 3,000 residents in the Glenwood Springs area were evacuated from their homes as helicopters and tanker aircraft bombarded the area with fire retardant and water.

“The flames came so fast that we didn’t have any time at all to grab anything,” said one distraught woman who lost her home.

That fire is believed to have been sparked in the extremely dry undergrowth by an underground coal seam that has been burning in the area — racked by fires that killed 24 firefighters in 1994 — for years.

“Given how early it is in the season and the amount of land burning due to the dry and windy conditions, this is one of the most severe fire seasons in years and is very, very unusual,” said forestry official Mit Parsons.

A range of federal and state agencies have combined forces to tackle the blazes, part of a series that has been blackening large parts of the states of Colorado, California, Arizona and New Mexico.

A major fire which had consumed around 9,308 hectares (23,000 acres) north of Los Angeles in California was meanwhile 90 percent under control, firefighters said, after the blaze ran amok on Friday, burning up nine houses.

Fires are an annual phenomenon in the western United States — which is dominated by desert, hot weather and strong winds — but a very dry winter and years of cumulative drought have rendered the area especially vulnerable this year.—AFP