By Staff
A routine prescribed burn has gotten out of control and is now a wildfire. The Smith Mountain prescribed burn is now the Smith Mountain wildfire, burning about 40 miles southeast of Casper in mountainous terrain. Tony Brown, Public Affairs Specialist for High Desert District for the Bureau of Land Management in Wyoming, said right now they don’t know why the prescribed burn jumped containment into a full wildfire.
Brown says it’s common for prescribed burns to improve wildlife habitat, increase livestock forage, enhance rangeland vegetation, and reduce hazardous fuels. He says the conditions for the prescribed burn were okay at the time, and now they need to figure why it got out of hand.
Currently firefighting crews from the BLM, Albany county, Wyoming State Forestry, and the Medicine Bow National Forest are fighting the blaze.