Wrangell Sentinel -

ANCHORAGE (AP) — A wildfire chewing through the forest in an Alaskan wildlife refuge has expanded in size, prompting authorities to order the evacuation of 1,000 structures, officials said.

The massive fire in Alaska's Kenai Peninsula covered nearly 243 square miles (629 square kilometers) and was 30 percent contained, according to a posting Sunday night on the Alaska Interagency Incident Management Team's Facebook page. It was burning in the 1.9 million-acre (770,000 hectares) Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

The number of people told to flee their homes isn't clear, said Michelle Weston,...