Wyoming Wildfire Forces 15-Minute Evacuation at Youth Camp

On the afternoon of July 21, lightning struck the Laramie mountain range west of Tie Siding, a small community in Wyoming. Within minutes, what had begun as a routine check-in day for teenagers at Batel Ranch, a summer camp affiliated with the Mormon Church, launched into a full-blown emergency. Flames whipped within a mile of the camp, spreading through the nearby Medicine Bow National Forest—leaving campers with minutes to escape.

In all, 20 campers and five adult staff successfully escaped the fires. But the call shows how quickly a single lightning strike can become a life-threatening blaze, and how acting swiftly can save lives.

“It wasn’t really scary because it just happened so fast. You know what you need to do and you just do it. You don’t even think about it,” volunteer camp host Louise Fico told Outside.

For Louis and his wife Debra Fico, it was a routine afternoon during their first summer volunteering at Batel Ranch, a youth camp operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). The couple was among the first to spot the fire after hearing the lightning strike and seeing smoke rising from a nearby ravine.

“We were probably watching [the smoke] with a couple of the leaders no more than five minutes,” Louis said. “And then we saw some huge flames come up and we all looked at each other and we just said ‘we need to evacuate.’”

Sitting in southeastern Wyoming, Camp Batel Ranch hosts LDS summer programs centered on outdoor recreation, faith, and leadership.

On the morning the fire broke out, early attendees had just arrived and were preparing for up to 60 additional campers expected to join the following day. After learning of the wildfire, campers quickly pivoted, focusing instead on evacuating the facility. The camp has two exits, but only one of the exit routes led toward the same ravine where the fire had started, leaving the main entrance as the only safe option.

Camp workers led the attendees out of the main entrace. Louis and Debra estimated that everyone was safely evacuated within ten minutes, loading into vehicles and leaving everything behind.

“We could see the hillside burning,” Louis told Outside.

As the line of vehicles made its way down the rough dirt road toward Tie Siding, the fire continued to grow.

“From the fork in the road, you could just see the flames starting to get pretty high,” Louis said. “They started to look like they were going above the power lines in an area of very dense woods.”

The campers weren’t the only ones fleeing.

“On the way out, we saw a mother moose that likes to visit a lot with her calf, and she was walking down the street, protecting her calf down the road,” Louis said. “The animals definitely freaked out. Once they start smelling smoke, they know what to do.”

Crews from the Tie Siding Volunteer Fire Department battled through the night to keep the blaze from spreading farther into nearby ranches and recreation areas.

Louis and Debra told Outside the fire ultimately came within roughly a quarter- to a half-mile of the camp. Looking back, Louis said the group decision to leave immediately prevented a far more dangerous situation.

“It really was a matter of which way the wind was going to blow,” he said. “But we didn’t have to panic. If we waited, we might have had to panic.”

The Albany County Sheriff’s Office announced the wildfire was fully contained and extinguished by July 26, after burning roughly 16 acres.