Cheyenne – Gov. Dave Freudenthal declared a state of emergency Tuesday afternoon as winds pushed a fast-moving wildfire toward hundreds of evacuated homes south of Casper.
Officials said winds were driving flames and had forced firefighters to pull back in places Tuesday afternoon. The fire was first reported Monday morning and had burned about 5,000 acres by midafternoon Tuesday.
The fire was about 5 miles south of Casper, Wyoming’s second-largest city, near the center of the state. But it was moving southeast, away from the city, toward scattered rural subdivisions.
Freudenthal said Tuesday afternoon that his office was pushing to get more federal firefighting resources assigned to the blaze.
“It’s really more of everything,” Freudenthal said, describing what resources are needed.
A top-level federal fire-management team from Utah was scheduled to take over managing firefighting operations Tuesday afternoon.
“Part of the difficulty is the extensive amount of beetle-kill (dead trees) and the extremely dry weather we’ve had,” Freudenthal said.
State Forester Bill Crapser said firefighters were pulled back in places because embers were blowing across fire lines and creating spot fires behind crews.
Crapser estimated about 225 firefighters were on the blaze but said he expected numbers to go up significantly as more crews are pulled off other fires elsewhere. He said fire engines were being used to try to protect the scattered houses in the area.
