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RAPID CITY, S.D. (KELO) –Several roads are closed and a pre-evacuation alert has been issued as crews battle a wildfire in western KELOLAND.
The “First Thunder” started last night about three miles southwest of Rapid City.
Currently there are around 100 resources on scene both on the ground and in the air.
“So there’s a lot of access roads to get in there. There are a few canyons in some of our steeper areas in the forest to deal with so that is hampering us. But luckily we are able to use a lot of the road systems, rock outcroppings, and just using hand lines, dozer lines, retardant lines as we speak,” Incident Commander Brandon Sanchez said.
What started as a fire on private property has grown and spread into the Black Hills National Forest.
As crews are trying to mitigate this fire, air tankers are dropping retardant every 30 minutes or so. In between time while they are refilling over at the Rapid City Regional Airport. There are helicopters getting water from Rapid Creek to drop and help out.
Currently there are no evacuation orders, but the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office wants people in the area to be ready.
“If there are evacuation orders, we’ll be out going door to door. We did place some door hangers last night and through the morning just giving people a heads up, just to be prepared. We try to get ahead of these things if we can,” Patrol Lieutenant Jason Mitzel said.
In the event of evacuation, people should only grab important documents, pets, medication and irreplaceable items.
This fire is currently priority one in the region.
“When we get larger fires like this we will get resources from all over the country if possible. So with this being the highest priority in the region we get access to like we have the four air tankers. You know, if we were lower on the priority we probably wouldn’t get that,” Sanchez said.
A red flag warning will last into the night when officials expect the winds to slow down significantly.
Briefings are expected to take place daily until this fire is under control.
For safety updates you can follow here.
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