The town of Hartville and the nearby Pleasant Valley subdivision southeast of Glendo State Park in southeastern Wyoming were evacuated overnight Tuesday as a fast-moving wildfire ballooned overnight, burning through more than 25,000 acres of grasslands in the region, the Wyoming Forestry Division reports.
To the people frantically getting out of the way of the flames, it was like being caught in a surreal, hellish nightmare.
That’s how Platte County resident Vicki Hood described watching in the dark as the glowing flames came closer to her home and horses, which she moved to a friend’s property.
“It was Armageddon, that’s what it looked like,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “It’s almost like you have to see it to truly believe what it looks like. We were watching flames that were shooting 60, 70 feet in the air.
Hood said she and her husband, Bob, are both OK, as are their four horses. But being at their property near Guernsey in the dark with the approaching flames was frightening.
“When we came out last night, we moved our horses in the dark and the hillsides, it was like if you stood at the edge of Los Angeles and took a picture into the hills,” she said. “You’d see a mass of city lights, and that’s what it looked like. We had flames along the road we were driving past, and the power pole to our house burned.”
Get Out
Forestry spokesman Jerod Delay told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday morning that orders were given overnight to evacuate people who live the area.
They were instructed to go to the Camp Guernsey Camp Training Center in nearby Guernsey. The military camp is a 78,000-square-foot training center for the Wyoming National Guard that can handle up to 160 people, he said.
Hood said she got a text at about 3 a.m. telling her the fire had jumped Highway 26.
Just how large the fire grew to also has to be determined.
“Right now, we estimate between 20,000 and 25,000 acres,” Delay said. “We’ll have a better determination of the acres that have burned once we perform a mapping of the area on a flyover.”
There has been no containment of the fire, which is actually two fires that combined late Tuesday — the Haystack and Pleasant Valley fires.
A large wildfire comes right up to Highway 26 in eastern Wyoming. (Severe Weather Outlook via Facebook) 
Huge plumes of smoke can be seen for miles. (Severe Weather Outlook via Facebook) 
This photo shows the Pleasant Valley Fire on the left just before it merged with the Haystack Fire. (Wyoming State Forestry Division) 
This striking image shows a large wildfire advancing on the eastern Wyoming communities of Hartville and Guernsey. It was shared by Juliana Schile to the Wyoming through the Lens Facebook page. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
The combine Pleasant Valley/Hartville fires glow ominously overnight Tuesday. (Goshen County Emergency Management) 
The combine Pleasant Valley/Haystack fires burn unchecked across parts of Platte and Goshen counties. (Goshen County Emergency Management)
‘Huge Areas Of Burn’
The sky Wednesday had the smoky overcast look that is visible in big fires like this one. The smell of smoke also permeated the air.
The affected area is located from Guernsey along Highway 26 north to Hartville, and east of Guernsey to Fort Laramie, and north to Waylon Canyon, according to Delay.
He said that some electrical poles had burned overnight.
Photos of the fire posted to Facebook painted an apocalyptic landscape, with many commenters offering up prayers for those affected.
Hood said that seeing the impact of the fire in the daylight is striking.
“There are huge, huge areas of burn all the way to the ground,” she said. “It’s just black where it went through. It’s pretty obvious the wind must’ve changed direction a number of times.”
A spokesman with Oregon-based PacifiCorp, the parent of electric utility Rocky Mountain Power in Wyoming, said that it had not received reports of outages.
Meanwhile, Wyoming Highway Patrol troopers were making sure people weren’t driving into the area without their consent. They stood guard at gates closing off U.S. 26 that runs about 25 miles to the east over to Hartville.
Trooper J.D. Pittsley stood at one such gate, but said that he wasn’t given any other information other than Wyoming State Route 270 also had been closed down.
State Round 270 runs north and south of Hartville.
Heroic Efforts
Delay said that firefighting resources in the area have been limited because of the eruption of multiple wildfires across Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain region, including the nearby states of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota.
He said that four large, single-seat air tankers are involved in fighting the Hartville fire, along with a handful of hand crews, and numerous state and county fire departments.
He said that the Burlington Northern rail line that runs through the area also may have been briefly closed overnight.
“We are competing for firefighters not only from Wyoming but also others in the Rocky Mountain region,” Delay said.
The local firefighters, however, are doing heroic work, Hood said. She credits them with saving many homes, including a neighbor’s near where officials believe the fire started.
There were flames on three sides of the house, “and they saved it,” she said. “What a great, great fire department effort we have here.”
“This is a very serious situation that is impacting a lot of homes,” Delay said. “This will be probably be going on for the foreseeable next three or four days.”
The Caper Interagency Dispatch Center is working with its parent center in Lakewood, Colorado, on coordinating firefighting equipment for this wildfire, Delay said.
“They’ve got to prioritize where the equipment goes,” he said.
FEMA Weighs In
On Wednesday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency authorized the use of federal money to help with firefighting costs for the fire burning in Platte County near Hartville.
The state made the request to FEMA to help with the wildfire, which FEMA has dubbed the Pleasant Valley Fire.
FEMA Region 8 Deputy Administrator Katherine Fox approved the state’s request for a federal fire management assistance grant after receiving the request and determined that the fire threatened such destruction that it would constitute a major disaster, according to a statement issued Wednesday by FEMA.
At the time of the request, the Pleasant Valley Fire was threatening 100 homes near Hartville as well as threatening buildings, infrastructure, utilities and watersheds in the area.
The fire began at about 6 p.m. on July 30, said Forestry spokesman Delay.
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
