Hot Springs, S.D. ? One of dozens of fires Sunday across the West raced out of a canyon in South Dakota’s Black Hills “with a vengeance,” killing a homeowner and destroying 27 homes, authorities said.

Residents of about 50 homes had fled the wildfire near Hot Springs that also injured two firefighters and closed a section of a state highway, state and federal officials said. An area of roughly nine square miles has burned since the fire was sparked Saturday by lightning.

Firefighters try to control a fire along Interstate 15 near Cove Fort, Utah. The fire closed a 60-mile section of the interstate for about five hours on Sunday. Other fires blackened the landscape in California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Oregon.

One person was killed while trying to retrieve possessions from a home. The person’s identity was withheld until relatives could be notified, authorities said.

“This thing blew up because of extreme hot temperatures and the winds,” said Joe Lowe, state wildland fire coordinator. “It came out of the canyon with a vengeance.”

Gov. Mike Rounds toured the area Sunday and noted that the trees around some houses were charred but the dwellings were intact.

“I don’t know how in the world you saved some of those homes,” he told firefighters at an evening briefing.

More than two dozen homes had no damage because of a high-tech gel made of water-filled bubbles.

High wind overnight near Wenatchee, Wash., spread a brush fire that threatened homes. By Sunday morning, 250 to 270 homes had been evacuated, and at least three outbuildings were destroyed.

In fire-swept Nevada, about 1,500 evacuees from Winnemucca were allowed home hours after a wildfire destroyed an electrical substation and several outbuildings, shut down Interstate 80, delayed trains and killed livestock. No injuries were reported.

“It was pretty hairy for quite a while, and people thought they would go back to nothing,” Humboldt County Undersheriff Curtiss Kull said Sunday. “It was a huge wall of flame coming at the homes. It’s amazing that no homes were lost.”

In Utah, the largest wildfire in state history grew to 283,000 acres Sunday. The blaze has swept through about 442 square miles of extremely dry sagebrush, cheat grass and pinion juniper in central Utah.

“This fire just ran away from us, and we couldn’t put a dent in it,” said Mike Melton, fire management officer for Utah’s Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands.