LARAMIE – Composed of burnt vegetation, rock outcroppings and stubborn, green groves tucked into steep draws, the eastern edge of the 19,243-acre Badger Creek Fire created a mosaic on the slopes west of Jelm Mountain.
“This has been primarily a wind-driven fire,” Rocky Mountain Team Black spokesperson Brant Porter said Saturday, pointing across a gulch to stripes of earth burnt black and still smoking. “So, the fire activity has been more up to the wind and the weather, but as the fire gets into these lighter fuels (grasses and sage brush), activity can decrease.”
Appearing through a bank of smoke on the fire’s west side, a small helicopter flew low overhead as Porter and fire information officers Lori Iverson and Stephani Rust surveyed the area.
“There’s no load attached to (the helicopter), so I would imagine they’re scouting,” Porter explained. “Looking for progress in the area, active areas, it’s really an overview. There could multiple members of the management staff on board that are all looking for different things.”
The Laramie River snaked through the hills below the team.
“A river is in most cases wider than a fuel line that you would dig with a hand crew,” Iverson said, explaining the water could serve as part of Team Black’s fireline. “But we do have to be cautious of any falling trees that could cross the river or blowing embers.”
The pillars of smoke that became commonplace in the Laramie Valley after the fire started June 10 had taken a leave of absence, and for the first day in many, the peaks of the Snowy Range were clearly visible.
Porter said thunderstorms rolling through the area Friday night increased the relative humidity, which contributed to a decrease in fire activity.
“The increased humidity … it will raise the moisture in those really light fuels,” Porter said. “Instead of them being crackly and super, super dry, it’ll get a little bit of moisture in them, and that can be enough to push the instant flammability to a point where it needs to be exposed to more significant heat to combust.”
Rust said despite potential precipitation in the next few days, the public should expect to continue seeing smoke from the area.
“The interior is going to continue to burn,” Iverson added. “This fire isn’t going to go out over the weekend.”
Team Black presented a mixed bag of potentially good and bad news Saturday during a public meeting at the Albany County Fairgrounds.
While slower winds and damp vegetation are assisting firefighting efforts, Team Black Incident Commander Shane Greer said the National Weather Service issued a flash-flood warning for southeast Wyoming, which could slow efforts to contain the fire area and return residents to their homes.
“We kind of knew the weather was coming, but we didn’t know how much,” Greer said. “We are in a rapid mode of declining our firefighting, because we’re getting it done very quickly, which is good news.”
With much of the vegetation burned out in the area, however, he said too much rain could make moving through the area difficult, especially if flash floods wash out the dirt roads crews are using to access the fire.
“Now, we’re going to start getting you home,” Greer said. “But getting you home is a whole other process. We want to do it as fast as we can, but we also need to do it safely.”
Electricity is still out in much of the area as well as natural gas, Albany County Emergency Management Coordinator Aimee Binning said.
“We’re working together (with Team Black) to make the decisions when it’s safe to re-enter,” Binning said. “With all the rain coming in, we also have a lot of unstable ground. The stuff that usually holds that dirt isn’t there anymore.”
While thunderstorms could slow the re-entry process, Greer said his teams wouldn’t stop working toward reuniting residents with their teams.
“The good news is we’re into the stage of working on the stuff we need to do to get you back home,” Greer said. “But it’s going to take time.”
