Wooldridge Devastated

Sixty-three Agencies Responding

These are just a few of the pictures that were taken during the Wooldridge fire on October 22-23, 2022. State-wide mutual aid was initiated after several hours of fire fighting by Cooper County Fire Protection District and twelve other area fire departments. In all, there were approximately 63 fire departments and 150 firefighters that fought this fire. The downtown area of the Village of Wooldridge lost 20 structures. Eight of the structures were inhabited at the time of the fire. The fire was pushed by 40 mph winds into the river bottoms. The fire raced north along the bottoms to the Missouri River Bridge at Rocheport where it was finally stopped. The fire line was approximately 4 miles long. An estimated 3,200 acres of the Wooldridge Bottoms were burned. The I-70 bridge into Cooper County was closed for about two hours due to the heavy smoke. The picture of the bridge is reported to have been taken by one of the last vehicles allowed to cross into Cooper County before the bridge was closed.