Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming, for Wednesday, September 4th. I'm Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by ServeWyoming - Wyoming's center for volunteerism and AmeriCorps service for the last 30 years! For volunteer opportunities, visit ServeWyoming dot org"

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An advancing Fish Creek Fire prompted an evacuation of the historic Brooks Lake Lodge and nearby subdivisions Tuesday evening.

Cowboy State Daily's Renee Jean was in Dubois when the evacuation order came.

"I got an evacuation order on my phone, and they sent the entire map of like, of what I thought would be the area that's being evacuated, and DuBois was on the edge of that… they have been preparing Brooks Lake Lodge, you know we've been writing about that… They've got an elite firefighting team there, so it's as safe as it can be with a wildfire bearing down on it… what's burning in the Fish Creek Fire is all this pine beetle killed pine trees… And this fire is just, you know, 1,000% more intense than most other fuel sources would be so it would take a real gully washer to stop this fire."

Smoke and unstable fire lines have also closed Highway 26/287 over Togwotee Pass, forcing some tourists who were headed for Yellowstone National Park to turn back and filling up nearly every room in town in Dubois Monday night.

Read the full story HERE.

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A series of delays placed a Black Hawk pilot and a former athletic trainer in the right place and time to rescue a wrecked and hurt airplane pilot from a fire outside Meeteetse on Sunday.

Steve Atencio and J.R. Larsen were out looking for bighorn sheep Sunday morning so they could fill Larsen's hunting tag, the pair told Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland on Tuesday.

"Atencio actually said there were all these stupid little things that kept getting in our way. So they took their own course. They were trying to follow a friend's direction. They were avoiding grizzly bears. They were distracted by some wolves… So all of these things happened where they were just not anywhere on the schedule they had envisioned, or the path they had envisioned. And that was when they heard that the plane go down."

The woman who died in the crash has been identified as 78-year-old Mary Lou Sanderson of Lake Havasu, Arizona. The pilot is still alive and is being treated in a Billings hospital.

Read the full story HERE.

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There will be a gaping hole left in the Saratoga, Platte Valley and Carbon County communities by the death of Loren "Teense" Willford, a former state legislator, music man and familiar face at countless public events around Cheyenne and southern Wyoming.

Cowboy State Daily's Leo Wolfson reports that Willford, a fourth-generation Wyoming native, died early Tuesday morning at the age of 85 from cancer.

"Willford served in the legislature from 1993 to 2002 but he's probably even well more well known for his musical presence that he carried and public presence that he carried in Saratoga, in the whole Platte Valley and carbon County as a whole, Willford was a mainstay in seemingly every public event that occurred in some of these communities. He also served as the executive director of the local Chamber of Commerce. Spoke to a number of different people about the impact he had on the community, and he was just well known as being just a consistent figure who is perpetually friendly and jovial, making friends wherever he