THIRTEEN PERISH WHILE FIGHTING FLAMES IN FOREST

Fire, Driven by High Wind, Traps CCC Workers in Wyoming

Two Score Burned with 25 Requiring Treatment in Hospitals

CODY, Wyo., Aug 23. – (AP) – A hunt through smouldering (sic) ruins of a charred mountain forest, where gale-driven flames burned thirteen fire fighters to death, failed today to yield any additional bodies.

BELIEVED ALL FOUND
“We feel now that we have brought out all the bodies and that all our dead are accounted for,” said John Sieker, supervisor of the Shoshone national forest in which the blaze occurred.
Two score others were injured – twenty-five so seriously they required hospital treatment.
All the victims, many of them CCC enrollees from Texas, were fire fighters, trapped while battling the blaze in the Shoshone national forest in northwest Wyoming.
The blaze, which broke out Friday from an undetermined cause was about thirty-five miles northwest of Cody and approximately the same distance east of Yellowstone park. It blackened 1500 to 2000 acres of dense timber in the Absaroka mountains.
As the flames subsided slightly under a drizzling rain the searchers edged forward today.
“If there are, it seems impossible they could be alive.”

DOCTORS CALLED
Eight of the bodies were recovered yesterday. Three others were found last night among the gaunt skeletons of trees stripped of foliage and life by flames.
The first person to die in a hospital was ROY BEVINS, civilian conservation corps enrollee form Smithville, Tex., who had gasped out, “God, how lucky I am to be alive,” after he was carried from the inferno.
The injured were cared for in the three small hospitals in Cody, which drew its name from Co William (Buffalo Bill) Cody, frontiersman and wild west show promoter.
Several physicians from Cody hiked through darkness over perilous mountain trails nearly 10,000 feet above sea level to set up a first aid station near the fire.
Forest Supervisor Sieker predicted that “with a good break in weather” the fire could be brought under control today.

WIND CAUSES TROUBLE
“As fires go, it isn’t large,” he explained. “It covered only from 1500 to 2000 acres.
“The wind made it treacherous.
“AL CLAYTON and a man names Post were two of the finest forest fire fighters we had, but they and their party of six were caught by a 40-mile gale as they worked up the mountain.
“They all ran for a rocky ridge but the fire caught them and all fell flat on the ground in the bare hope of escaping.
“We found them still lying there – in a straight line as the fire had caught them while they were running. All but Post were dead. Somehow he escaped apparently only slightly hurt. He was sent to his home in Basin, Wyo
“Some of them were almost cooked.”
Davis, bureau of public roads foreman, gave a graphic account of (missing text) suggested, he would speak in defense of his program and ask the defeat of his opponenets at the polls the death-dealing from his hospital bed.
He was leading a party of fifty, four-fifths of them CCC enrollees, Saturday afternoon, digging frantically on a ledge to erect a fire line.

FIRE TRAVELS FAST
“The wind suddenly whipped the flames up to the tree tops,” he said.
“I never saw fire travel so fast.”
“It encircled us faster than we could run.
“When I saw we were trapped I herded all the men to the rock ledge and forced them to lie down.
“But the flames roared over the rocks from the tops and the fire licked at our clothing.
“Some of the CCC boys got excited. They started to run away. Some of us older men forced them to stay on the rock refuge, but some got away.
“I guess those who ran probably were some of the persons killed.”

Nevada State Journal, Reno, NV 23 Aug 1937

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BLAME LIGHTNING FOR FLAMES IN FOREST IN WYOMING

Cody, Wyo., Aug 24. – (AP) – Supervisor John Seiker, of the Shoshone national forest, said today that lightning ripping into a remote pine-filled canyon, “unmistakably” caused the savage forest fire that took the lives of fourteen firefighters.

BLAZE CONTROLLED
Seiker reported five hundred weary and smoke choked men on the fire line now had the blaze under complete control. He estimated the flames that roared out of the isolated “box” canyon had swept over 2000 acres of heavily wooded slopes in the Absaroka mountains.
Seiker said investigation spotted the fire source definitely in this canyon, surrounded by high rock walls on all except one side.
“Lightning is the only possible thing that could have started a fire in there.” Seiker declared.
The fourteenth victim of the fire died last night in a Cody hospital
He was AMBROCIO GARZE of Corpus Christi, Tex., member of the Tensleep CCC camp which mustered most of its enrollees from Texas and Oklahoma.

23 IN HOSPITALS
In three small hospitals at Cody, thirty-five miles southeast of the fire, twenty-three men seriously burned in the fire were given good chances for recovery if unforeseen infections and complications did not develop from their painful burns.
Twelve fire fighters, less seriously burned in the trap where the fire surrounded them, were sent by train from the Shoshone CCC camp, base of the fire combatants to Cheyenne.

Nevada State Journal, Reno, NV 24 Aug 1937
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Transcribed by Jenni Lanham. Thank you, Jenni!