Copyright 2006 The Salt Lake Tribune
All Rights Reserved
By NATE CARLISLE
The Salt Lake Tribune (Utah)
In Washington County, no fires are allowed except campfires in pits in improved campgrounds. No smoking in fields with vegetation. Discharging fireworks, tracer ammunition or other incendiary devices on federal, state and unincorporated private lands is prohibited.
Similar restrictions are also in effect for the Arizona Strip in northwestern Arizona.
Where wildfires are a concern, above-normal precipitation can be a bittersweet drink.
Winter snows and spring rains keep vegetation green and resistant to fire, but the moisture grows those grasses and brush too. When they dry out, the vegetation becomes fuel.
The formula has already played out in southeastern and southwestern Utah, where small wildfires already have broken out this month. A wet year in 2005 helped grow fuel in those areas, and a dry 2006 — especially in southern Utah — has made those spots ripe for fire.
In southern Utah, heavy fuels, such as logs and tree branches, are in summer conditions, “and it shouldn’t be that way this early in the season,” said Sheldon Wimmer, fire manager for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
On the whole, Utah has a higher than normal threat of wildfires this summer, said Alex Tardy, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City. In addition to low precipitation levels in southern Utah, Tardy said, the entire state can expect higher than normal temperatures this summer — perhaps not enough to be noticed by the average Utahn, but enough to influence a wildfire.
“That doesn’t mean we’re going to have big fires or anything,” Tardy said. “It just means the threat is there.”
The outlook is better in northern Utah and the state’s higher elevations, both of which have had more typical precipitation totals. Tardy said he expects snow to remain in the high elevation into July.
In 2005, Utah set a five-year high for acres lost to wildfires. More than 318,000 acres burned. About 200,000 acres were lost in Washington County. Still, wildfire officials felt Utah was fortunate last year because of a relatively low number of fires and because few structures were lost and only a handful of towns were evacuated.
Washington County has already had some wildfires this year. Two around Hurricane earlier this month burnt more than 5,000 acres. A wildfire that began Thursday near the rocket-testing range east of LaVerkin has burned about 650 acres but was largely contained Saturday.
Utah’s reserve of Black Hawk helicopters, used for dropping water and transporting personnel during wildfires, is currently with an Army National Guard unit training in Texas. The unit and its helicopters are scheduled to be shipped to Iraq by the end of the summer.
National Guard officials said the state has two Black Hawks on loan, one from South Dakota and another from Wyoming, to use in the interim. The aircraft should suffice in a wildfire season similar to the past few, Guard officers said. Meeting needs in any greater catastrophe, officers said, would require Utah to turn to its neighbors for help.
Though about 1,000 of Utah’s citizen soldiers are deployed overseas or in training elsewhere in the United States, National Guard officials have maintained they will have enough soldiers to help, if called.
A busy fire season can place a strain on city fire departments and county fire districts because they’re often the first responders to wildfires.
Corky Brewer, chief of Moab Valley Fire District, is expecting more wildfire activity in southeastern Utah than in recent years. So far this year, Moab Valley has seen its normal share of wildfires — a handful of grass and brush blazes, Brewer said. Those fires, Brewer said, moved faster than a typical May wildfire and more like a summertime fire fueled by dry plants.
“We haven’t had anything real big,” Brewer said. “We’re definitely lucky because we’re real dry.”