Mullen Fire sees dramatic increase

Since starting on September 17, the Mullen Fire has grown to over 80,000 acres in size as it continues to threaten multiple communities while challenging fire crews. Additionally, the fire has decreased in containment from two percent to zero percent.

In the past week, high winds and low humidity led the fire to grow from approximately 14,653 acres on Wednesday to 80,279 acres on Monday evening. As the fire grew, so too did the number of personnel on the fire. On the morning of September 22, the Rocky Mountain Area Incident Management Blue Team took over operations while 185 personnel worked on the fire. By Monday evening, that number had increased to 738.

While the Mullen Fire saw large increases throughout the week, it wasn’t until the weekend that the most dramatic increases took place. On Friday morning, the fire was at 25,250 acres. John Peterson, public information officer for the Rocky Mountain Area Incident Management Blue Team, informed the Saratoga Sun on September 25 that there would be dramatic increases to the fire. 

By Friday evening, the fire had increased over 10,000 acres and was mapped at 35,810 acres in size. That increase in size led to evacuations of Fox Park, Foxborough, Albany, Woods Landing and Fox Creek Road.

On Saturday, the Mullen Fire saw an increase of 33,328 acres. Sustained high winds and warm weather led to the fire being mapped at 69,138 acres by Saturday evening. As the fire increased, Wyoming Highway 230 from the Colorado State Line to Woods Landing was closed. For a brief period of time, Wyoming Highway 230 from Riverside to the Colorado State Line was closed as well. Traffic to Laramie was redirected to Wyoming Highway 130 over Snowy Range.

Throughout the day, mandatory evacuations were issued by the Albany County Sheriff’s Department and included areas along Wyoming Highway 10 and 11, Sheep Mountain, Jelm and Woods Landing. On Monday, the evacuation order for areas west of Wyoming Highway 230 from Meadow Plains Road and east from Sodergreen Lake to Lake Hattie had been lifted.

On Saturday evening, during an update livestreamed on the Mullen Fire Information Facebook page, Operations Section Chief Chris Zoller said “all bets are off with this fire.” As the fire continued to move east and south, many people expressed concern about Laramie, which is approximately 30 miles east of the fire. Zoller stated that while he believed Laramie was safe, he believed it was likely that the fire would enter the plains and sagebrush.

“You put 70 miles an hour behind any kind of fire and it’s going to eat anything it can and continue to move across that landscape,” said Zoller.

While there were a number of people asking about the status of structures in evacuated areas such as Rambler, Keystone and Albany, Zoller informed the viewers that he was unable to provide any updates.

“With the two days’ growth on this fire, our resources are extremely thin. We have folks out there ahead of the fire trying to get evacuations and do structure protection and they’ve been working really hard and they’re trying to get back to areas where they need to follow up with structure protections and try to juggle that balance while we’re calling out more evacuations,” Zoller said. “We just don’t have the manpower to go in and do that kind of evaluation yet. We’re still struggling to stay ahead of this fire and keep things safe and keep the public evacuated ahead of this fire.”

A small bit of good news on Saturday evening was that the Rocky Mountain Area Incident Management Blue Team had been able to secure an anchor point on the west end of the fire near the A-Bar-A Guest Ranch and the Platte River Wilderness. Less than 24 hours later, however, that status had changed as the Mullen Fire crossed the Platte River and moved towards the Pickaroon Campground in the Platte River Wilderness Area.

Additionally, the fire had crossed Wyoming Highway 230 near Woods Landing into an area left untouched by the 2018 Badger Creek Fire and had jumped over to Sheep Mountain. With little wind and increased humidity, however, the Mullen Fire saw less growth than on Saturday as it grew to approximately 77,000 acres.

By Monday, that acreage had increased to 80,279. During a Monday evening update from the incident management team, Zoller stated that there had been increased fire activity due an uptick in fire weather. While the moisture had contributed to slow fire growth on Sunday, Incident Meteorologist Chip Redmond informed viewers that there wasn’t much moisture expected in the near future.

“Looking out even farther, we’re out to mid-October before we start to see a glimmering change of decent moisture and even that is a small chance right now,” said Redmond. “So it is looking dry and above normal temperatures and breezy for the short and medium term.”

Zoller informed viewers that the north finger of the fire, which was near Rambler and had been projected to reach Centennial, was still seeing very little growth and that fire crews had been able to work on that fire line. Additionally, Division Tango, on the southern side of the fire, was working on finding control points to slow growth as it moved towards the Colorado State Line.

Division Alpha, positioned on the west end of the fire where an anchor point had previously been established, had seen the most fire activity on Monday according to Zoller. The Mullen Fire had left the Platte River Wilderness and had reached Bureau of Land Management land.

Some good news came from David Tolle, air operation branch director for the Rocky Mountain Area Incident Management Blue Team. While high winds had prevented aerial resources from attacking the fire over the weekend, Monday saw many of those resources return to work on the Mullen Fire.

“We’ve had most of our helicopters out flying and dropping water in various priority locations on the fire. We’ve had all four of the fire bosses up and working,” said Tolle. “It’s a good start for us to get back in the air today. We’ve had some limitations, certainly, over the last couple days with the weather.”

On Monday afternoon, Governor Mark Gordon directed “numerous state resources to provide assistance and support to affected communities and teams battling the Mullen Fire” according to a press release from Gordon’s office.

“I want to express my gratitude to the firefighters and support personnel who are battling to protect structures in the affected areas,” said Gordon in the press release. “These folks have been working very hard in a well-coordinated effort under extremely difficult conditions.”

The resources made available by the governor included personnel from Wyoming Highway Patrol, Wyoming Department of Transportation, Wyoming Office of Homeland Security, Wyoming Department of Health and the Wyoming State Forest Division. Additionally, the Laramie Armory for the Wyoming National Guard was being utilized as an incident command post.

As of Tuesday morning, the Mullen Fire had increased overnight to 82,649 acres in size.

Visit www.saratogasun.com or https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/7208/ for up-to-date information.