04/03/2026
Trial by Fire
Just days before March 12th at our admin meeting, we discussed how we needed to have fire evacuation training due to the severe drought, especially with all the new members we've recently added to our squad. In previous fire evacuations, there was sufficient time to warn residents who were miles away from the fire or it was spreading slow enough to evacuate residents in the immediate vicinity, many of which may already evacuated by law enforcement. Additionally the danger was only coming from one fire front.
The Qury fire, as it's known now, started with one instance near the west side of Hazelrodt Cutoff, but just a short time later another fire near Dear Meadow had started. With the intense winds, the embers from these very close fires created multiple spot fires in the area, leapfrogging in half-mile jumps.
We quickly organized teams and proceeded to evacuate residents along Hazelrodt Cutoff and Lower French Creek roads. The fire had spread so fast that our crews were cut off from each other but we continued evacuating our isolated areas. We evacuated some disabled residents from their homes on-the-spot, as there was no time to do otherwise.
The following hours and days relied on a large number of our members manning road blocks, escorting residents in and out, staffing EOC/HQ, and pulling REMS shifts. Many of our members put in over 100 hours in one week....... that's in addition to their day jobs.
As if a 9000+ acre fire wasn't enough for our community to handle, the Sundance fire started on March 20th, which thankfully was brought under control quickly by firefighting efforts. We assisted the Custer County Sheriffs in evacuations for this fire as well and had to request help from Pennington County SAR for call on Black Elk Peak that came in at the same time, which had to do an arduous carry out of an injured hiker. I believe Hill City VFD also helped with this call and there may be others, which we apologize if they were left out.
March 21st we had to perform a strenuous carry out. As our team was pretty tired from the fires and with reports of multiple hikers having multiple issues, we requested for mutual aid. Hill City VFD and Pennington County SAR answered the call. The main carry out was accomplished with the help of multiple government agency employees already staged there: Custer County SO, Custer State Park, and the Forest Service. We also had help from 2 hikers.
To conclude March Madness we did a successful recovery down in Hot Springs on March 23rd. We can't go into details on this one.
The work is not over though, as our drone team flies sorties to document the structure damage that occured.
Although property was lost during the Qury Fire, we are all blessed that there was no loss of life. Our community came together with overwhelming support, both residents and first responders and we're all grateful for multiple firefighting agencies coming to fight the fires.
