DENVER (AP) – Wind-blown wildfires threatened more than 1,100 homes in Colorado and Arizona, where drought conditions and gusting winds created ideal conditions for spreading the flames.

In Arizona, a roaring forest fire forced the evacuation of about 1,000 homes on the west side of Flagstaff, a city of 60,000 people nestled in a thick pine forest.

The blaze was contained Thursday morning at 150 acres, but gusting winds and a fear of flare-ups was likely to keep residents out of their homes though Friday, said Coconino County Sheriff’s spokesman Gerry Blair. Officials initially reported 200 homes evacuated, but Blair said the count was actually about 1,000.

In southern Colorado, a wildfire sparked by a downed powerline nearly tripled to 700 acres overnight near Westcliffe, where about 100 people had evacuated homes Wednesday.

“Areas that are really dense have burned,” said Steve Segin, a spokesman for the Rocky Mountain Incident Management Team. “Totally nuked, completely black.”

One house there was damaged, but none had burned Thursday morning, Segin said.

“I’ve been in fires before,” said Shirley Ward, a retired military nurse who heeded the warnings. “One minute they’re over here, the next minute they’re over the next hill.”

In northwestern Colorado, residents were advise to leave 35 homes as a 3,700-acre fire burned just north of Dinosaur National Monument, said Lynn Barclay, federal Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman. One abandoned cabin burned.

“It’s hot, it’s windy, it’s dry. We’re in extreme fire danger,” Barclay said.

That fire flared up from a tree stump that was still smoldering from an earlier blaze, fire officials said. In the Denver area, a passing train was blamed for sparking a smaller wildfire that disrupted traffic but was quickly contained.

Wind gusts, up to 45 mph on Wednesday, spread the flames and made fighting the blazes by air difficult.

The entire state of Colorado is abnormally dry right now, and more than half is facing severe or extreme drought conditions, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center. Arizona is almost entirely under extreme drought conditions.

A wildfire near Heber, Ariz., had burned 6,200 acres by Thursday and was threatening power lines that supply Phoenix and Tucson.

Near Flagstaff, when the 150-acre fire broke out Wednesday, crews in the area were able to quickly build containment lines but were widening them in case the wind picked up again.

“We really got lucky, what with the winds we had and how dry it is,” said Dick Fleishman, a fire information officer with the U.S. Forest Service.

So far this year, nearly 2.9 million acres have burned in the U.S. – more than three times the average by this time of year, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

On the Net:

National Interagency Fire Center: http://www.nifc.gov

Drought Monitor: http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/index.html

Forest Service: http://www.fs.fed.us

Copy the Story Link