Evacuation ordered, Crook County fire led to short orders for Upton

Shortly after 2 p.m. on July 29, Weston County Emergency Management announced via Facebook that immediate evacuations were in order for the subdivision on Barton Road in Upton due to a Crook County fire.

Roughly an hour later, via Facebook, it was announced that evacuations were still in order for the north half of the subdivision while the rest of the area was to remain on standby. And only one hour after that, evacuations were lifted, according to Facebook. However, people were asked to be aware and vigilant as conditions might change.

“Based on information gathered from Crook County and always siding on the ‘better be safe than sorry’ mantra,” Crook County Emergency Manager (Edward Robinson) and I both made decisions to do full evacuations,” said Gilbert Nelson, Weston County emergency management coordinator, in an email. “We know how fast wildfires spread, especially in these conditions.”

This started the door-to-door evacuations by Nelson and local law enforcement, Wyoming Highway Patrol and the Weston County Sheriff’s Office, in addition to the social media notifications and radio announcements. Nelson noted that the order also went out on IPAWS, the county’s alert system.

“After an hour or so and checking in with the (Weston) County Fire Warden (Daniel Tysdal) we updated the evac notices to just the north half of Barton Road. With the south side be in a ready and alert state,” he said in the email.

Once the fire was lined and Crook County was confident it wasn’t going to spread, the evacuation notices were lifted fully, Nelson said.

He noted that because of the evacuation orders, both the Upton Community Center and Upton High School were opened for those who had to leave their homes.

At the time of publication, details on the fire were unavailable.