By Glen Warchol
The Salt Lake Tribune
Copyright 2007 The Salt Lake Tribune
All Rights Reserved
TRIDELL, Utah — When firefighters ordered the tiny town of Tridell be evacuated, Bryan Smith refused to abandon his isolated house, a couple of miles south of the flames.
“I was aware of the situation,” he said. “The wind was north and I wasn’t in much danger.”
Smith, a water master or “ditch rider,” stayed to watch over his irrigation ditches that were rapidly emptying as residents upstream opened the gates to protect their homes.
“Water is in short supply; it’s very precious,” Smith said, but he completely understood his neighbors’ actions.
Smith’s wife and two children, however, left to seek refuge with a sister, leaving Bryan and his dog to fend for themselves.
The threat to Tridell was more than just the flames themselves. A water treatment plant near Whiterocks had a stockpile of chlorine for purification purposes. Firefighters feared that if the flames reached the chlorine, it would produce a toxic plume.
“They wanted everybody around here to get out,” Smith said.
But crews removed the tanks of chlorine and defused the situation even before the fire’s direction changed. They allowed the residents to return to their homes, but Smith said as of Sunday afternoon few had. “I guess they figure they are safe where they are.”
Smith was out checking his ditches and gates as smoke swirled out of the national forest a few miles away. “I sit here and watch the planes,” he said as large tanker aircraft dumped water on the fire. “They brought some big ones in.”
A few miles away, on the outskirts of Whiterocks, Todd and Cara Mair evacuated their home for just a few hours Saturday, then returned when the fire receded to spend the night in their house with their three teenage children despite the lingering, eye-stinging smoke.
Though most of the smoke had cleared from their yard, the Mairs still had their pickup truck piled with belongings Sunday.
“We are already packed,” Mair said. “We are ready to go if the fire comes this way.”