01 September, 2017
A lightning strike Sunday caused a massive fire that forced officials to close the main artery between Reno, Nevada, and the Burning Man festival for several hours before reopening it this morning.
It says fire crews from across California are joining more than 1,000 firefighters battling the fire that started Tuesday.
The growing wildfire burned through 30,000 acres, forcing authorities to shut down Highway 447 between the Nixon and Empire communities in Nevada, authorities told ABC News on Thursday.
Since 1990, Burning Man has been held in Nevada's Black Rock City, a temporary, large-scale camp burners set up in the shape of a semi-circle for the festival.
The location where Burning Man is held in is managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management.
Burning Man is a popular festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert set to run until September 4.
The event's annual draw dwarfs the average daily count of 380 vehicles that use the 75-mile, mostly paved state and county road.
A 65-mile (105-kilometer) stretch of U.S. Highway 395 remains closed from south of Gardnerville, all the way to Bridgeport, California, at the intersection with California State Highway 182.
A fire in Montana, about 60 miles south of the Canadian border, destroyed five cabins and five other structures and threatened 130 more buildings, fire officials said.
Thousands of people have been driven from their homes amid hot weather in Oregon, Montana and California, where a blaze burned 10 homes and threatened 500 more near a hard-hit community and another kept a popular road to Yosemite National Park closed.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said Thursday that the blaze about 70 miles (112 kilometers) north of Sacramento had consumed almost 5 square miles (13 square kilometers) and was partially contained.
Nevada National Security Site spokeswoman Tracy Bower said Thursday that the fire covers nearly 4 square miles (10 square kilometers) in the western part of what used to be the Nevada Test Site.
Some who were heading toward the festival on Thursday expressed their disappointment on social media that they couldn't get to Burning Man.