High Winds Fuel New Wildfire On Reservation In South Dakota
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Strong winds hampered firefighters’ efforts to contain a large wildfire on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation Monday, a day after another grass fire prompted the evacuation of a small town on the reservation that straddles the Dakotas.
Monday’s fire began about 3:30 a.m. about 6 miles north of Wakpala, South Dakota, and had not been contained by midday as wind gusts surpassed 40 mph, said Johnelle Leingang, the tribal chairman’s executive secretary and a member of the tribe’s emergency response team.
“It’s moving quickly,” she told The Associated Press. “It’s in the Oak Creek area now, a very wooded area.”
No structures were threatened and no injuries were reported. There was no immediate word on the cause of the fire, which Tribal Emergency Manager Elliott Ward said had grown to about 1 ½ square miles. A Red Cross team was being dispatched from Rapid City to help responders.
On Sunday, three homes and a church were destroyed in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, and the 875 residents were evacuated from their homes in the Standing Rock Indian Reservation community when electrical poles were knocked down. Most were back in their homes Monday morning, with only about two dozen families still displaced, KXMB-TV reported.
Several hay bales caught fire north of Cannon Ball on Saturday night, and the flames spread into town Sunday when winds gusted up to 60 mph, Ward told The Bismarck Tribune. About 150 firefighters responded to the fire that scorched nearly 2 ½ square miles of the reservation that straddles the North Dakota-South Dakota border.
“After they all got here, they knocked it down pretty good,” Ward said.
Some of the people evacuated from Cannon Ball were taken to a tribal casino near Fort Yates. The Red Cross set up a shelter in Porcupine. Classes were canceled Monday at schools in Cannon Ball and nearby Solen.
Grass fires in other parts of the Dakotas destroyed homes and shut down highways Sunday, as wind gusts surpassed 50 mph and several cities in the two states set hot weather records in the 90s. Firefighters attributed the fires to sparks from passing trains and hot farm equipment. The Sunday fires were contained and no injuries were reported.
A blaze in Dickey and LaMoure counties blackened about 5 square miles, Dickey County Emergency Manager Charlie Russell told the American News. Firefighters in Stutsman County responded to nearly a dozen fires Sunday afternoon, and a blaze north of Jamestown destroyed one home and damaged several others, Stutsman County Emergency Manager Jerry Bergquist told KQDJ radio.
Fires temporarily shut down stretches of U.S. Highway 83 and Interstate 29 in North Dakota and U.S. Highway 14 in South Dakota.
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Information from: Bismarck Tribune,
