Containment increasing for Mullen Fire

More than a month after starting near the Savage Run Wilderness, the Mullen Fire is over 50 percent contained and has burned over 170,000 acres. As fall brings cooler weather and more precipitation, that containment is expected to grow as the number of personnel on the fire is reduced.

Having started east of Encampment, near the A-Bar-A Ranch, on September 17, the Mullen Fire grew rapidly as it consumed windblown and beetle-killed timber in the Savage Run Wilderness. Within a matter of days, the fire had moved from Carbon County into Albany County before eventually moving down into Colorado. 

Just two weeks ago, the Mullen Fire had seen a growth of 50,000 acres to exceed 150,000 acres in size and becoming one of the largest wildfires in Wyoming history. Since then, however, growth has been limited with approximately 26,000 acres of growth in 14 days.

On Thursday, the Southern Area Incident Management Blue Team held a Zoom conference as Fire Information Officer Christopher Joyner answered questions from local media. 

When the Rocky Mountain Area Incident Management Blue Team took over operations of the Mullen Fire, officials stated that it would take a “season ending event” to end the fire. That same estimation was given by the Southern Area Incident Management Blue Team when they took over as well. Joyner was asked if, with the cooler weather and precipitation, a season ending event was approaching.

“It’s really hard to say what’s going to happen with the weather. Our patterns just in this past week have seemed to change. Like yesterday, we weren’t expecting the mountain of snowfall we got,” said Joyner.

The fire information officer added that the French Creek area was likely the area to burn the longest as it had large fuel loads. Joyner also stated, however, that during an infrared flight the heat from the fire was barely showing up in the French Creek area and would be the first casualty to a season ending event.

“What our ops (operations) guys are telling me is it’s very moist in here, it’s already really wet and these recent storms have helped that,” Joyner said.

As the Mullen Fire has burned, there has been concern expressed by frequent and avid public land users that there would be limited regrowth due to the length and intensity of the fire. Joyner, however, stated that there was potential for regrowth in the Mullen Fire burn scar.

“I was on the Pine Gulch Fire just a few weeks ago at my hometown of Grand Junction (Colorado) and that fire burned more intense than any fire I’ve ever seen. I bring that up because we haven’t seen that high intensity across this entire fire,” Joyner said. “There are areas that are going to be that higher intensity but we’re not seeing that widespread intense burn where it’s going to be super difficult to get more growth to come back where we’re having to plant small grasses and things like that just to get the soil held.”

He added that while he had been informed by some of the teams that there was evidence of high intensity burns, most of what they were seeing were not the type of burns that would destroy seed banks and limit growth. According to Joyner, some areas within the Mullen Fire perimeter still had downed timber that was unconsumed by the fire.

As the fire has continued to burn, many updates from the incident management teams have discussed focusing on structure protection rather than attacking some areas of the fire directly. According to Joyner, that structure protection has worked in fighting the Mullen Fire. In cases such as Albany, crews are working around the clock on structure protection as they are still dealing with the fire and radiant heat.

“Anytime you lose any structure, that’s one too many. We’ve been successful since our team has been here. There have been some structures lost but we feel like we’ve been very effective, specifically in areas like Albany where we still have a lot of heat,” said Joyner. “We have teams there around the clock right now and they’re still dealing with active fire in there and I feel like the structure protection has done an incredible job when you think about the intensity of these 1,000 and 10,000 hour fuels. They burn very hot, they burn very long and they’re very difficult to put out.”

Joyner made a specific point to praise the residents of Ryan Park. As the Mullen Fire had moved northward and Ryan Park appeared to be the next community impacted by its progress, the residents held a clean-up day to remove fuels from around structures in the area.

“You do not see this, this is incredibly unusual, but as a community they took their own future into their hands and went out there and did things to try to clear out the fuels to make their homes more defensible,” Joyner said.

The Mullen Fire is currently at 176,854 acres and is 72 percent contained. Approximately 445 personnel are still working on the fire and a containment date of October 30 is still expected.