CAMBRIDGE, Neb. — Wind-driven wildfires sweeping by means of components of Nebraska killed a retired hearth chief and injured a minimum of 15 firefighters, authorities mentioned Sunday.
The man who died Friday evening was a retired Cambridge hearth chief who was working with firefighters as a spotter in Red Willow County within the southwestern nook of the state. That hearth had burned greater than 78 sq. miles (202 sq. kilometers) in Red Willow, Furnas and Frontier counties by Sunday afternoon.
The Nebraska Emergency Management Agency mentioned firefighters had been nonetheless working to comprise that enormous hearth Sunday, and officers didn’t have an estimate of how a lot of it had been contained.
Alyssa Sanders, with NEMA, mentioned 66-year-old John P. Trumble, of Arapahoe, was overcome by smoke and hearth after his car left the street Friday due to poor visibility from smoke and dirt. His physique was discovered early Saturday.
At least 15 firefighters have been injured battling the blazes, together with 5 who had been hurt within the hearth that killed Trumble, however a spokeswoman mentioned the state company didn’t have particulars about their accidents.
Blazes have been reported in 14 counties in across the state since Friday, together with Perkins, Dundy, Burt, Butler, Scotts Bluff, Cheyenne, Duele, Blaine, Cherry, Brown and Thomas counties. The state company mentioned these different fires had both been extinguished or principally contained by Sunday afternoon.
The company didn’t present estimates of the full space that had been burned by all of the fires or the variety of houses or different buildings that had been destroyed. Roughly 100 calves had been killed when one hearth in Rising City burned a number of calving sheds, and a minimum of three hearth vehicles had been broken or destroyed within the fires.
Sanders mentioned her company didn’t have the entire particulars in regards to the fires as a result of native hearth departments had been managing the response to most of them.
Several small cities, together with Cambridge, Bartley, Indianola and Wilsonville, in Nebraska’s southwest and Macy in its northeast, had been compelled to briefly evacuate due to the fires. The evacuation orders had been lifted Saturday.
The Nebraska National Guard deployed three helicopters and several other assist vehicles to assist battle the blazes.
In New Mexico, 20 wildfires continued to burn Sunday throughout the state, together with one hearth that had grown to eat 84 sq. miles of land.