Chad Flanagan has lived in the rural Wyoming town of Dayton all his life.
He grew up hunting, fishing, camping and snowmobiling on the face of the Bighorns that rise up above the small Western hamlet of about 850.
Now Flanagan, 44, said he’s “heartbroken” watching that mountain face burn while he and his neighbors pack up to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.
“We got woken up at 3 o’clock this morning,” he told Cowboy State Daily on Saturday.
That’s when everyone in town got the word that they’d been elevated to a “set” status of evacuation because of the Elk Fire, which blew up again overnight to more than 62,000 acres.
For wildfire evacuations, areas are put on “ready,” “set” and “go” status, with set meaning be ready to go, and go to leave immediately.
At 3 a.m., the mountain was frightening to look at, Flanagan said.
“It was just a giant glow the whole face, just glowing orange,” he said.
Looking at it again after sunrise, “It’s not quite a dire-looking as it looked at 3 o’clock in the morning, but we know they can put us on ‘go’ status at any time.”
Like most Wyoming communities, Dayton has had to deal with wildfires before.
“But nothing like this,” Flanagan said. “This is completely unprecedented for this area. I’m not totally surprised, to be honest with you. There’s a lot of timber and beetle kill up there, and forests are being forests.”
While not as frightening as seeing the mountain glow orange in the darkness, seeing it during the day is perhaps worse, he said. It's emotional for those who live there to look up and see just a wall of smoke, flames and the blackened landscape left by the wildfire.
“It’s heartbreaking is what it is,” Flanagan said. “Tongue River Canyon is where we all enjoyed and recreated and it’s probably all gone.”
Even after the snow flies and the fire is finally extinguished, Flanagan said Dayton won’t be the same for years, if not decades. Locals will have a black mountain face to look at until Mother Nature can bring it back.
“That mountain will probably be nice again in 15-20 years,” he said.
The small, rural Wyoming town of Dayton can only watch and pray as the Elk Fire burns across the mountain face of the Bighorns above. (Photo by Chad Flanagan, Lifelong Dayton Resident) 
The small, rural Wyoming town of Dayton can only watch and pray as the Elk Fire burns across the mountain face of the Bighorns above. (Photo by Chad Flanagan, Lifelong Dayton Resident) 
The small, rural Wyoming town of Dayton can only watch and pray as the Elk Fire burns across the mountain face of the Bighorns above. (Photo by Chad Flanagan, Lifelong Dayton Resident) 
The small, rural Wyoming town of Dayton can only watch and pray as the Elk Fire burns across the mountain face of the Bighorns above. (Photo by Chad Flanagan, Lifelong Dayton Resident) 
The small, rural Wyoming town of Dayton can only watch and pray as the Elk Fire burns across the mountain face of the Bighorns above. (Photo by Chad Flanagan, Lifelong Dayton Resident) 
The small, rural Wyoming town of Dayton can only watch and pray as the Elk Fire burns across the mountain face of the Bighorns above. (Photo by Chad Flanagan, Lifelong Dayton Resident) 
The small, rural Wyoming town of Dayton can only watch and pray as the Elk Fire burns across the mountain face of the Bighorns above. (Photo by Chad Flanagan, Lifelong Dayton Resident)
Overnight Run
In the meantime, hundreds of wildland firefighters are throwing everything they have at the Elk Fire.
What officials with the Rocky Mountain Incident Management Team feared would happen did, with strong winds pushing the fire in multiple directions and growing it to more than 62,000 acres, the team reports. That includes jumping U.S. Highway 14 again.
Much of the fire’s growth has been to the south and east.
One local who didn’t evacuate overnight when told to ended up getting hurt, said Sheridan County Sheriff Levi Dominguez in an early morning Saturday fire update form Dayton.
“It was definitely a firefight for the firefighters out in the field last night,” he said. “We knew it was coming with the winds, we were prepared for it.”
Even so, the fire remains out of control and 0% contained, according to the latest incident management team report.
For local agencies, Friday night and early Saturday morning were been spent going door-to-door telling people to leave, the sheriff said.
“The fire has moved a lot down south and has made its way down to the Big Goose area as well,” Dominguez said.
If told to go, “be out of the area,” he said. “We’ve had some civilians in those ‘go’ areas, and it’s been a distraction for the firefighters as they try to work hard and work diligently to combat the fire.
“We had a civilian injured in a ‘go’ area last night.”
There was no other information on the severity or nature of the injury to the local resident.
While firefighters appreciate people wanting to be with or protect their property, not evacuating can be a problem, said Kristie Thompson, spokesperson for the incident management team.
“It can take away from the suppression efforts,” she told Cowboy State Daily on Saturday morning. “Of course, we will always help the person first. It’s in our nature as firefighters that we’re going to help people first.”
Growing …
While the size of the fire has been pegged at 62,104, it’s definitely larger, Thompson said.
“This fire has grown, and we know it has grown quite a bit more,” she said. “That’s because that (estimate) was done at about 1 this morning, and the cold front came in at about 1:30.”
So far, the fire running along the face of the Bighorns south and east, she said.
“It’s staying up on the face of the mountain as it’s moving to the southeast right now,” Thompson added. “We are forecasted to have more of those northwest winds pushing toward the southeast all day today.”
As for the smoke, Thompson said that at the incident management team’s headquarters in Dayton, “the smoke is laying low right now, and there’s definitely smoke happening and it’s heading southeast.”
Along with preserving people and property, crews have identified another important target for protection — the water supply for the city of Sheridan.
The city’s water treatment plan is southeast of the Elk Fire, which also is the way the winds are blowing, Thompson said.
Some Leaving Without Orders
There are now nearly 600 people working the fire, which is expected to continue to be fanned by strong, dry winds Saturday.
Fire activity picked up significantly after noon Friday and continues, according to the incident management team.
“Fire activity escalated to very active surface fire spread, which initiated crown runs and spotting in the heavy down, dead timber fuel types,” the report says. “Spot fires developed quickly.”
In the Burgess Junction area on the southwest side of the fire, people aren’t yet being told to leave, but many aren’t waiting. They’ve been packing up their cabins and leaving, said Jacob Joseph, whose family runs the nearby Elk View Inn.
He’s concerned about the fire, but said that so far, it doesn’t seem to be making a serious run toward the inn.
“People are leaving and getting stuff out of their cabins over there,” he said. “Judging by the hot spots, it looks like it’s getting close to the junction. It’s definitely making its way here a little bit.”
The fire has decimated a lot of the Elk View’s business, which this time of year is almost exclusively hunters, Joseph said.
“A lot of the people that were coming to stay, their hunting area is under fire right now,” he said, adding most are calling to cancel.
In the meantime, the incident management crews have staged some of their equipment at the inn, he said.
The list of evacuations continues to grow and includes these areas:
• Little Horn Canyon
• Eaton’s Ranch.
• Tongue River Canyon.
• Pass Creek and Twin Creek roads west of Parkman.
• All homes from X-X Ranch north to the Montana state line.
• Tongue River Canyon west of Dayton where the road turns to dirt.
• The Horseshoe subdivision.
• Homes west of Beckton Road from Dayton south to the intersection of Beckton and Eaton • Ranch roads.
• Eagle Ridge subdivision and homes directly east of U.S. Highway 14 up the mountain.
Along with Dayton now on “set” status, so are:
• South of Twin Creek Road from Parkman north of Amsden Road; also west of Highway 343, including along Smith Creek and Columbus Creek roads.
• Homes east of Tongue Canyon and Amsden roads.
The best and most current information about the Elk Fire is being posted to the U.S. Forest Service-Bighorn National Forest and Sheridan County Government Facebook pages.
Contact Greg Johnson at greg@cowboystatedaily.com
Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.
