Fighting The Lava Mountain Fire In Northwest Wyoming [VIDEO,GALLERY]
In northwest Wyoming, just 20 miles out side of Dubois, the Lava Mountain Fire has grown to over 12,000 acres as of July 28th. With weather conditions being what they are fire growth is expected over the next 24-48 hours as high temperatures will continue to approach 75 degrees and with humidity of only 15% and west winds 8-15 mph and gusting to 20 mph Mother Nature is not helping the efforts. Current conditions are expected to continue through Sunday, July 31 and possibly into next week.
At this point there are numerous evacuations and road closures in the area and a number of additional evacuations possible depending on the progress of fire fighters through the day.
According to Inciweb,
This incident is being managed as a full suppression fire using both ground and aerial resources as necessary. Additionally, firefighters are utilizing natural and man-made barriers to help check the spread of the fire.
At this time 766 fire fighters are assigned to the fire and fire fighting efforts have included bombers dropping slurry and helicopters dropping water and slurry as well. Here is a behind the scenes look at some of the fire fighting efforts provided by Dubois resident Art Andersen and by the U.S. Forest Service