Fire crews working on the Mullen Fire in the Medicine Bow National Forest planned to use most of Thursday doing repair work inside the fire’s perimeter.
Michael Williams, the public information officer for the Southern Area Blue Team (a Type I wildfire management group), said that the fire didn’t grow significantly overnight Wednesday and was affecting 176,371 acres as of Thursday morning. It is still at a 34% containment rate.
The strong winds on Wednesday, with gusts reaching to 75 mph, didn’t have much effect on the fire area, something for which Williams and the rest of the fire crews were grateful.
“We got through that wind event relatively unscathed, not a lot of movement in the fire,” Williams said. “Unfortunately, our friends down to the south there at the Cameron Peak Fire had quite a bit of fire growth. So [we’re] pretty fortunate that the fire didn’t do anything [like that here].”
Crews will also do assessments to see what they can do to get the area inside the fire “back on track,” Williams added.
Overall, crews want to get the forest back in good condition before the next snowfall.
As of Thursday, the hottest area of the fire was found north of Albany and firefighters continued to battle flames there. Williams noted that crews placed a fire retardant base around the community, while also working to clean up any possible fuels left behind.
