Wyoming
Dayton residents prepare for evacuation as Elk fire grows
DAYTON, Wyo. — The Elk fire in northern Wyoming continues to burn across the Bighorn mountains. Early Saturday morning, residents in Dayton were asked to be ready to evacuate at any moment, as the winds are pushing the fire southwest.
With winds over 60 mph, at about 1 am Saturday morning, the Elk fire reached over 62,00 acres. Residents in Dayton have moved from a “Ready” evacuation status, to a “Set” evacuation status, meaning they need to be ready to evacuate.
Mack Carmack, MTN News
“This one… It just got big so quick… and the winds are not in our favor, by any means,” says Rhianna Miller, a mother and Dayton resident.
Mack Carmack, MTN News
Miller says she used to live in Florida, and would often experience hurricanes, but says this wildfire takes the cake for natural disasters she’s experienced.
“It’s one thing to prepare for a hurricane, ‘cuz you know it’s coming. But, this hands down has to be the most terrifying,” Miller said.
The reason the Elk fire has been so destructive, according to Sheridan County officials, is because of the high winds and timber in the Bighorn mountains. Where most wildfires burn grass, the Elk fire is burning trees.
Mike De Fries 
“So (grass fires) can be very fast moving, but if… the wind slows down, they’ll slow down, and we can get ahead and really cut that off. Well, when it’s in a different sort of fuel type, like very heavy timber, it’s going to take a lot longer for that fuel type to be consumed,” said Kristie Thompson, the Public Information Officer for the Elk fire.
What may be most unfortunate for residents is the fact that, because of these high winds and timber, Elk could burn for weeks.
Mack Carmack, MTN News
“So, as long as it’s held at bay, and doesn’t come closer to town, I would like to go home,” said Miller.
Many Wyoming residents are hoping to go home, as many areas have already evacuated, including: South Highway 14, west of Beckon Road, and Eaton Ranch Road. In Montana, some Bighorn County residents are preparing for evacuation, as well.
Mack Carmack, MTN News
“(These fires) are very dynamic, very fluid. We’re constantly looking at that with the Incident Management Team, the operations, and coming up with a plan. That’s our primary goal, to make sure that the public is safe, the firefighters are safe. So when we’re seeing the fire move, and the activity change, we are constantly looking at that, and determining where we need to set evacuation notices,” said Levi Dominguez, the Sheridan County Sheriff.
As of Saturday afternoon, the fire is zero percent contained, many evacuations are in order, and heavy winds continue to spread across the region. Because of that, there is no way of knowing when Elk fire is to end.
“Until the snow comes, we will likely be seeing smoke,” says Thompson.
Wyoming
Wyoming authorities call on Rocky Mountain Power to explain role in massive November power outage
by Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile
The massive, multiple-utility power outage last fall that left some 250,000 customers across parts of Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana without electricity was the result of miscommunication and inadequate procedures during planned maintenance that required de-energizing a power line in southcentral Wyoming, according to a report.
The Nov. 13 incident left thousands of homes and businesses without power for 9.5 hours — longer, in some cases — and knocked out a coal-powered generator outside Glenrock. The unit at the Dave Johnston Power Plant remains offline, leaving Rocky Mountain Power to backfill some 300 megawatts of electricity — enough to power about 225,000 homes.
Without expressly assigning blame to any one party, the report — conducted by the Western Electricity Coordinating Council and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation — indicates a series of communication breakdowns between PacifiCorp (parent company of Rocky Mountain Power), the Western Area Power Administration and, to some degree, electrical grid coordinating teams.
While it’s unclear whether authorities such as the North American Electric Reliability Corporation might pinpoint fault and assess penalties, the Wyoming Public Service Commission has called on Rocky Mountain Power to appear at a hearing scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Wednesday. The commission wants to hear from the utility about “the specifics and details of the event and report,” a public notice announced, and it “may consider and take any action that is in the public interest.”
The hearing at the Public Service Commission’s office located at 2515 Warren Avenue, Suite 300, in Cheyenne, will also be livestreamed at this link.
What happened
According to the 49-page report published in June, PacifiCorp and the Western Area Power Administration were coordinating maintenance on their respective systems that, together, required temporarily de-energizing PacifiCorp’s Aeolus–Clover 500 kilovolt line, which runs east-west and is anchored, in part, by a substation near Medicine Bow.
The effort also required curtailing some local wind energy from feeding the grid, according to the report. But on the day of the planned maintenance, Nov. 13, there was confusion about whether the Western Area Power Administration would scrap its work, so wind energy wasn’t curtailed as originally planned.
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Wind turbines near Cheyenne poke into a colorful sunrise in January 2025. (Tennessee Watson/WyoFile)
The report indicates that modeling tools might have failed to accurately measure local grid conditions, so when the power line was de-energized, “power flow rapidly redistributed throughout the northeast portion” of the local grid. “Within six seconds,” according to the report, “an electrical island formed and collapsed, causing widespread effects across that portion of the interconnection.
“The disturbance,” the report continues, “culminated in the loss of more than 4,800 [megawatts] of generation from coal, natural gas, photovoltaic and wind resources.”
The cascading power failure began at about 12:45 p.m. on a Thursday, dragging down portions of service territories operated by Rocky Mountain Power, Black Hills Energy, Montana-Dakota Utilities and some rural electric co-ops.
The report points to failures in communication, process deficiencies and inadequate modeling tools. Wind energy was not “identified as a contributing factor,” according to the report. It credits both battery storage and wind energy throughout the impacted area for supporting “a faster frequency recovery across the interconnection” and for providing “readily available capacity during system restoration.”
This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
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