Firefighters swarmed to tackle yet another Interior wildfire Monday, this one threatening cabins near Fairbanks after the driest month ever recorded in the city.

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With more hot, brittle weather expected today, the 300-acre blaze outside of town immediately became the top priority for fire officials who are juggling a massive wildfire season.

"Resources in Alaska are almost tapped out," said Forestry Division spokesman Gary Lehnhausen. "We just basically don't have anything more we can send and we're having to order more resources from out of state."

The latest fire diverted crews and aircraft from the state's largest collection of wildfires -- the lightning-sparked 462,000-acre Railbelt Complex burning near Nenana, Lehnhausen said.

About 470 people are assigned to the blaze. Firefighters are protecting a natural gas drilling rig from the flames and hoping to keep the fire from jumping the Teklanika River, which could threaten housing subdivisions to the south.

The complex grew more than 100,000 acres over the weekend, fire officials said.

"Before, it was just kind of burning around in the wild lands and threatened a few cabins and that drilling rig," said National Weather Service meteorologist Kelly Allen. "Now it's actually starting to threaten some major infrastructure."

The second-largest batch of fires, called the Crazy Mountain Complex, crept within about four miles of the village of Circle northeast of Fairbanks on Saturday, said Forestry spokeswoman Sarah Saarloos.

About 260 people are battling the complex, which is a combination of four fires totaling about 354,000 acres as of Sunday night, she said. The flames crossed the Steese Highway at about Mile 154 over the weekend.

"The trees have burned out their roots and have fallen onto the road," Saarloos said.

The National Weather Service issued "red flag" warnings for both major Interior fire areas Monday afternoon, Allen said. "It means that conditions are right for fires to get easily out of control ... Since they're both several hundred thousand acres already, yeah, that could be bad."

Humidity is expected to drop today while temperatures rise roughly 10 degrees, she said.

As of Saturday, fires had burned about 2 million acres across Alaska so far this year. Wildfires had burned only about 90,900 acres by this time in 2008.

The most active fire season on record was 2004, when more than 700 wildfires consumed roughly 6.6 million acres.

Still, this July had even more smoky days than in 2004, Allen said from Fairbanks, where smoke has been choking the city and other parts of the Interior for weeks.

LOW VISIBILITY

"(For) two days it looked like an eclipse had happened ... Kids would ride down the street and disappear about half a block away on their bicycle," said Marilyn Duggar at Coghill's General Store in Nenana.

Duggar said firefighters from Montana and Idaho, Oregon and Chevak have been stopping by the store to buy Red Bull, tobacco and socks as they dig in for a long fight.

Meantime, the Fairbanks North Star Borough labeled the local air as "unhealthy for sensitive groups" because of the smoke and ash Monday afternoon.

"You can taste it. It's just nasty," said Linda Burke, program director for the Fairbanks Youth Soccer Association, which postponed 19 tournament matches one day last week to escape the smoke.

Allen, the meteorologist, has asthma. She's ready for some rain.

"I'm waking up every morning coughing for a good 10, 20 minutes, reaching for my inhaler."

FIGHTING ON MULTIPLE FRONTS

As of Monday, more than 900 people were assigned to battle or monitor 12 wildfires across the state, said Forestry spokeswoman Maggie Rogers.

The latest fire causing concern was reported west of Murphy Dome at 1 p.m., she said.

Fire officials placed it at about 27 miles west of Fairbanks, burning on both sides of the Chatanika River.

By 4 p.m., the estimated size was 300 acres and firefighters looked to douse it early before they had another giant blaze on their hands.

"It will be the highest priority until we either catch it and put it out, or don't catch it and it becomes an extended attack fire like the (Railbelt Complex)," Lehnhausen said.

Water-scooping aircraft that had been tackling the Railbelt fires were sent to the new blaze, Lehnhausen said. Two fire crews were expected to be diverted.

"As things get more complicated, as we start to have competition for resources, there's going to be a fire somewhere that we just can't get on quick enough," he said moments after learning of the new fire. "And it's going to be big and it's going to cause us trouble."

Read The Village, the ADN's blog about rural Alaska, at adn.com/thevillage. Twitter updates: twitter.com/adnvillage. Call Kyle Hopkins at 257-4334.

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