Firetrucks, Other Equipment Burn Up In Blaze At Cheyenne Fire Station

Update: This story has been updated with more information from Laramie County Fire Authority Chief Jason Caughey, including a cause hasn’t yet been determined and that the apparatus destroyed by the fire would’ve been deployed to help fight the California wildfires if a call for assistance comes.

Cheyenne firefighters were dispatched out to a structure fire at a familiar address Saturday night — 8843 Yellowstone Road just north of the city limits.

That’s because the corrugated steel three-bay garage is the Laramie County Fire Authority’s Station 74, a non-operational facility that’s home to the department’s mechanic and wildland firefighting team.

By the time Bethany Green arrived on the scene at about 8:30 p.m., firefighters were already pouring water into the burning building, which “was just engulfed in flames,” she said.

Green’s family owns Riverbend Nursery on the west side of Yellowstone Road across from Station 74. When she heard about the fire, she said she felt compelled to get to the scene to make sure the business was OK.

“Yeah, we just wanted to see if the fire was going to jump (the road) or something, possibly get to us over here,” she told Cowboy State Daily at the scene of the fire Sunday morning.

No Help For California

An investigation into what caused the fire is still underway, Laramie County Fire Authority Chief Jason Caughey told Cowboy State Daily. That’s being handled by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office.

What is known is that the building and the three wildland firefighting apparatus and two side-by-side vehicles inside are “a total loss.”

It also means that if the fire district were called upon to send equipment to help fight the California wildfires, that won’t happen because that were the trucks that would’ve gone, the chief said.
“We were on the list to deploy out there first of the week if they still needed it,” Caughey said.

What Was That Call?

Getting a call to one of your own facilities was something new for Caughey and most of the firefighters in the district, he said.

In fact, the first call out from dispatch gave the address of a different fire station, which made the firefighters at that station take notice.

“You can imagine, they were a little confused there for a second,” Caughey said, adding that they heard their own station come over and were going out to check their building.

The right address was quickly corrected and crews descended on the Yellowstone Road station, which has been a cornerstone of service for that north Cheyenne community since 1974, he said.

“We’ve never had our own event,” he said. “The lessons learned are that the emotional process you go through is what a citizen goes through when they have a fire. This was (educational) to understand what a citizen goes through.”

The call came in about 7:45 or 8 p.m., and the fire was knocked down and in control in about an hour, the chief said.

Was Burning For Awhile

The building isn’t normally staffed and nobody was hurt, Caughey said.

That Station 74 served as a spot to repair and work on equipment makes sense to Green, who said the smell from the smoke “was just terrible, like oily and stuff.”

She also said there was a quick and robust response, and that firefighters seemed to get the fire under control quickly and contain it to just the building.

Green also said it was exciting to watch the firefighters in action, and that they had a good challenge.

“The building was all burning, and the flames were mostly coming from this end,” she said, pointing to the south side of the structure.

Sunday morning, all the doors had been torn off, leaving the front open. Inside looked like an apoplectic scene from a nuclear disaster movie.

There was so much damage because the fire had apparently been burning inside the building for awhile before it began to show externally for someone to report it, Caughey said.

Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.