A number of wildfires popped up in western North Dakota this weekend, devastating thousands of acres of land and narrowly missing towns like Arnegard, Mandaree, and Ray. The large Elkhorn and Bear Den fires are still burning. Officials say the Bear Den fire near Mandaree is somewhat reduced, but the Elkhorn fire near Grassy Butte is not contained at all.
The National Guard, the State Forest Service, and volunteer firefighters from all over the state responded to the fires this weekend. North Dakota Forest Service Fire Management Officer Ryan Melin says Saturday’s winds kept the fires growing and made it extremely difficult to fight the various fires in the west.
"Absolutely extreme conditions. There were winds in excess of 70 miles an hour. At the Charleston fire especially, between the smoke and fire, we had blowing dirt, many firefighters were navigating their apparatus, their vehicles, by an individual staring at their phone using Google maps to navigate the truck through zero visibility to fight the fire, so they can actually find the fire ridge, find some flames, put it out, and try to navigate without finding a creek or a coulee or anything else."
Melin says there were a number of fires put out by the response, which included national guard aircrafts dumping water on the blaze and even crews from Montana and New Mexico joining the fight.
Melin says the fight isn’t over yet, and many crews have been awake all weekend trying to stop the fires. With the low humidity, high winds, and no rain in sight, he says they’re in this fight for the long-haul.
"We're talking Elkhorn, talking Bear Den, we're talking all these other fires, which is important, but we do have to lean forward on this. We know that we're probably here until it snows and that's the honest to God truth that no one wants to hear. Fall in North Dakota — we know we're going to have frontal passages and we're in a fairly active pattern. We're dry, we're very dry, we have a real susceptible fuel bed to fire, so any kind of spark that's hitting in the ground is pretty much starting a fire."
So far, the fires are estimated to have burned around 50 thousand acres of land.