Residents along the east front of the Bighorn Mountains scrambled to escape the 32,000-acre Elk Fire that has burned six outbuildings, injured one firefighter and closed Highway 14 between Dayton and Burgess Junction.
The fire consumed barns, outhouses and other “non-primary residential buildings,” Sheridan emergency officials reported Wednesday. The firefighter’s injuries are not life-threatening, officials say.
Pushed by red-flag winds, the fire, discovered Friday, has raced through a 15-by-6-mile swath of forested mountains and hills since lightning sparked it on the Bighorn National Forest. It has spilled over to the range’s eastern face and into some ranches and subdivisions east of Dayton, population about 900.
Sheridan County emergency officials have issued evacuation notices to residents in several areas as 200 firefighters swarm to protect area homes and buildings.
“It’s rough,” said Rick Clark, who lives along the mountains about 5 miles west of Dayton. “I’ve been up the last two nights getting ready to get out of here.
“It just seems to be a perpetual fire; every time the wind shifts it goes somewhere else, then that area ends up being evacuated,” he said. “It’s a whiplash kind of deal — one minute it looks fine, the next minute you’re scrambling, then it’s moved the other direction.”
Along the Tongue River Canyon southwest of Dayton, Cathy Wallace’s husband Mark spent Tuesday night at the couple’s home protecting the property, which has since been evacuated.
“They stayed at the house all night and put out spot fires,” she said from a relative’s home in nearby Ranchester, where the couple has evacuated to. “I think the firefighters saved everything on our road, for now.”
Twilight Zone
“Holy cow, it’s dry,” Clark said in a telephone interview. “Unless you’re irrigating all the time, there’s nothing green around here.”
He’s got a cargo trailer loaded with “a jillion” instruments, sound systems and recording equipment from earlier years as a musician. He’s ready to go.
Combined with the smoke and charred hillsides, “everything looks like something out of the Twilight Zone,” Clark said.
This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
