Firefighters will spend much of Tuesday working to combat fire “fingers,” small areas protruding from the main body of the Mullen Fire that have been pushed in various directions inside of Medicine Bow National Forest, officials announced.
The strategy announcement was one of several made by John Peterson, public information officer for the Rocky Mountain Incident Mangement Team, during a briefing livestreamed to Facebook.
Peterson also announced that the Rambler area on the Carbon County side of the fire continues to be monitored for structure protection and has been evacuated.
“We’ve had a structural protection group in the Rambler area for over 14 days,” Peterson said. “They’ve been preparing those structures and they’re engaged with continuing to protect those structures.”
There have also been structure protection groups in the Mountain Home and Foxborough areas, which have also been evacuated.
As of Tuesday morning, the fire has affected just over 161,000 acres and 1,130 personnel are working to combat it. The fire is at 14% containment.
There have been “several” spot fires in the Albany area that firefighters have had to “actively and aggressively” combat and contain, Peterson added.
The fire has continued to move south into Colorado, but it hasn’t been nearly as aggressive as it was last week.
Peterson said it isn’t quite time to say there has been containment for the portion of the fire burning in Colorado, but noted that there have been fewer spot fires and that the fire was settling down in that area.
According to fire tracking website InciWeb, persistent critical fire weather will continue throughout Tuesday. Westerly winds will increase throughout the morning, hitting gusts up to 30 MPH.
Warm and dry conditions will be in place Wednesday through Friday. The winds will diminish some on Wednesday, but are expected to increase Thursday and Friday.
