WHEATLAND –In his outgoing report to the county commissioners, Platte County fire warden Aaron Clark said, “I want to remind everybody the fire ban is still in …
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WHEATLAND –In his outgoing report to the county commissioners, Platte County fire warden Aaron Clark said, “I want to remind everybody the fire ban is still in place…[unfortunately] it looks like I’m going to go out with the fire ban still in place. The long-term forecast is really pretty sour – it’s not looking good. There’s not been moisture of any measure really coming in and we’ve had above average temperatures. If we had a fire start today, it would go – there’s no doubt about it.”
Clark said in the 2024 fire season, an estimate of 11,000 acres were burned in Platte County, costing between $4 million to $5 million for air resources alone. “We’ve evacuated Hartville twice, and Dwyer once...we made three mutual aid calls in to Goshen County, and four mutual aid calls in to Albany County. Goshen County was here on and off all summer, but we’ve paid them back quite a few times,” Clark said. “We also lost two structures this year.”
There were some injuries: three firefighters had to have eye treatments, a wrenched knee needed medical attention, and one serious bicep separation required surgery.
Overall, the districts earned $100,000 from paid fire reimbursement from the Emergency Fire Suppression Account (EFSA) to help pay for wear and tear on the districts’ equipment, and firefighters earned $110,000 for payment from qualifying fires while offering mutual aid. “The firefighters put forth a significant amount of effort, but at least they got paid for some of their efforts.”
Palmer Canyon fire chief Will deRyk told commissioners he wanted to acknowledge Clark’s skill and decisiveness as part of the reason there was only 11,000 acres burned this past year. “Platte County has done an amazing job because of Aaron (Clark). We had an excessive amount of fires this year… [but] we went to the firefighter meeting in Casper, and listening to the other counties, they were burning 100,000 acres or more, so that’s a credit.”