Monday night’s winter storm left several areas across Wyoming, Fremont County included, with downed trees, power outages, damaged property, and more. In addition to cleaning up after the storm, Fremont County Search and Rescue spent September 8th and 9th assisting folks stranded in remote areas of the County.
The Fremont County Sheriff’s Office received a total of seven calls for assistance on Tuesday. Two of those evacuations continued into Wednesday, along with an additional evacuation near Atlantic City.
Below is the latest update from Fremont County Sheriff Ryan Lee about Wednesday’s evacuations.
Fremont County Search and Rescue crews continued to evacuate stranded persons out of the Wind River Mountains on Wednesday. A total of 9 persons who had been sheltered in place since Monday were airlifted to the Lander Airport without incident. Those missions included two men from Deep Creek Lake, and six men from Valentine Lake. None of the persons rescued were residents of Wyoming.
An additional Rescue Mission near Atlantic City was undertaken Wednesday afternoon after a man reported to the Sheriff’s Office that he had been stuck near Rock Creek Hollow since Monday. The man had been trying to dig out for two days and was unsuccessful. He was rescued without incident by 5:00 Wednesday afternoon. The man was reported to be from Minnesota.
The Sheriff’s Office currently has no pending rescue missions at this time, however, there are still four persons reported overdue from the Cirque of the Towers. Air reconnaissance of the area reported no campsites near the Cirque, however, observed some campsites in Sublette County between the Cirque and the Big Sandy Trailhead. During the flyover, no persons at those campsites signaled for assistance.
In addition to these calls due to the winter storm, Fremont County Search and Rescue had three for assistance over the holiday weekend. Click here to read our earlier post.
Fremont County Search and Rescue members are all volunteer, and work under the direction of the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office. They are part of the Lander Community Foundation’s Challenge for Charities 10-for-10. All donations made before September 15th will be matched. Check out the short video below: