Roosevelt Fire grows to 39,000 acres

By Tom Hallberg and Emily Mieure
Jackson Hole Daily
Via Wyoming News Exchange
 
JACKSON — Gusty conditions on the Roosevelt Fire have pushed its northeastern flank toward Highway 191, causing more Bondurant-area neighborhoods to be evacuated.
The encroachment on the road caused the Sublette County Sheriff’s Office to close Highway 191 to facilitate evacuations, with no timetable on its reopening.
The blaze was reported at more than 39,000 acres and 24 percent contained Sunday, though due to red-flag weather conditions and the rapid growth of the fire, officials were unable to ascertain specific details on its size.
“Fire management and personnel are responding to a rapidly developing situation,” fire information officer Larisa Bogardus said. Around 3:45 p.m. Sunday, Bogardus was “given the impression it was half a mile from the highway.”
A Facebook post from the sheriff’s office around 5 p.m. Sunday said the fire was moving toward the cellphone towers in the area and that “cellular service could be interrupted.” Calls from the Jackson Hole Daily to Sublette County sheriff’s Sgt. Travis Bingham following the post went straight to voicemail, but Hoback resident Heather Mathews, who owns land in Hoback Ranches, was able to get text messages to friends still in Bondurant.
The fire’s encroachment on Highway 191 has dramatically shifted the evacuation map to include Rim Ranches and Rim Station, as well as the area between Fisherman Creek Road and Highway 191. A video update from the management team said Flying A Ranch to Cline Ranches, Black Butte and the Packer-Miner Creek subdivison are also being evacuated.
As of press time, a region north of the highway, extending from Bondurant north to the Gros Ventre Wilderness boundary and east to the Kendall Valley, was under the “set” designation, meaning ready to go at any time, according to the sheriff’s office.
A Type I management team will take over at 6 a.m. Monday, with members on scene Sunday to shadow the Type II team that has been on the fire. Along with the new team, firefighters and resources continue to pour in.
“We’ve been getting reinforcements all day, every day,” Bogardus said.
The influx of resources is critical, as some air support and firefighters were pulled off the Roosevelt Fire to attack another blaze that popped up over the weekend. The Irish Fire near Boulter Reservoir on the Pinedale Ranger District was spotted at about 2:30 p.m. Saturday by a helicopter on an unrelated search and rescue mission.
“It’s blowing up quickly,” Bingham said Saturday. “When it rains it pours.”
According to the Bridger-Teton National Forest’s Facebook page, “air tankers dropped retardant around the entire fire, boxing it in and slowing its growth” to about 25 acres.
Twenty-eight firefighters hiked into the fire on a full-suppression mission to dig fire lines where possible, as the area around the blaze contained numerous standing dead trees. By Sunday afternoon, they reported no “issues or active fire behavior.”
“The suppression effort is going well, and upon inquiring, I’ve been told the fire is not growing or spreading,” public information officer Erin MacEwen wrote in an email.
With the Irish Fire not spreading, most efforts are being put toward the Roosevelt Fire and the Wyoming Range’s other large blaze, the Marten Creek Fire, which was reported to be about 5,600 acres and 7 percent contained Sunday.
Temperatures are expected to remain low Monday, in the 50s, but relative humidity levels are also expected to stay low, in the teens to 20s, with wind gusts of up to 20 mph in the afternoon.