By Glen Warchol
The Salt Lake Tribune
Copyright 2007 The Salt Lake Tribune
All Rights Reserved
 AP/The Salt Lake Tribune, Danny Chan La Firefighters hike in to help fight the wildfire north of Roosevelt, Utah, Sunday. |
NEOLA, Utah — More than 700 firefighters from around the West have protected Uinta Basin communities against a killer wildfire, but it continues to spread into the Uinta Mountains, fed by sweltering temperatures, kindling-dry timber and wind.
“We are actually doing a good job,” said Dave Carter, an operations field chief for the Rocky Mountain Incident Management Team. Even as fire officials took questions from reporters, a plume of smoke poured into the atmosphere in the distance. Ten miles away, red and orange tongues of flame were visible, leaping hundreds of feet.
“This is a fuels-driven fire, and everything is really burning well and completely,” he said, explaining an inferno that hot will burn even the greenest timber.
The major challenge the firefighters face is the hot, dry weather and gusty winds. It’s a situation expected to continue through the week.
“Buckets of water don’t do much when your humidity is in the single digits,” said Marc Mullenix, an incident commander-in-training. “This is some pretty tough weather to fight fires in.”
Still, crews successfully have thrown back the fire - which grew Monday to about 35,000 acres — on its east, south and west fronts. They have protected homes, power lines, water and hydropower plants and other structures.
But because the wind and dry fuel have created countless hot spots, crews must remain on the line to “mop” them up.
“We aren’t releasing as many resources from the southern part of the fire to the north as quickly as I thought we would,” Carter said.
The cause of the fire Monday remained under investigation. Officials also dispelled talk that the fire could have been knocked down in its early stages.
Dale Jablonski, area manager for the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands, called such speculation “absolute horse crap,” labeling the Neola Fire Department’s 15-minute response “awful doggoned good.”
Some locals were restricted from responding, following forestry rules that ban anyone who is not trained in firefighting to get involved, Jablonski said.
“Years ago, they would pull people out of the bar and hand them a shovel and say, ‘Let’s go fight the fire,’ and they buried their fair share of people doing that,” Jablonski said. “If we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it safely.”
That’s no comfort to Blane Warren, who said his cousin, Jeremiah, was restricted from bringing a bulldozer to the scene to fight the fire. Blane Warren said he watched as trucks with water hoses sat ready but unable to enter tribal land as the blaze burned Friday.
During a public meeting Monday night in Whiterocks, on the Ute Reservation, other residents continued to question whether the fire could have been doused early on.
“I’m mad because my house was in jeopardy,” said Ruby Atwine, a tribal elder who was evacuated from her home over the weekend.
Atwine also questioned officials why there were no firefighters on the reservation who were trained to handle this sort of blaze. Jablonski said training of local departments, including the one in Neola, paid off with a fast response time.
Firefighters from the Bureau of Indian Affairs soon took over, eventually handing over the effort to a Type 1 Rocky Mountain Incident Management Team.
“I can say with an extreme amount of pride that everyone worked really good on this fire,” Jablonski said. “I could not be prouder.”
Because the fire still is spreading northward up mountain canyons, the level of containment reached only 10 percent by late Monday.
The ferocity of the fire has made it difficult to make an accounting of destroyed buildings.
“The fire was so intense, it mangled structures so bad. It’s not easy to tell if it was a residence, a barn or an outbuilding.” said Mullenix, who observed about a dozen charred structures.
About 100 Utah National Guard troops were dispatched to the Uinta Mountains to enforce road closures to the public in Ashley National Forest.
Fire teams and equipment still are flowing into the area from across the West.
“We are looking really good,” Mullenix said. “Because we are the only large fire in the nation, we got a lot of the resources we requested.”
Everything except rain.
“We are not seeing much out there in the way of a [weather] break,” Mullenix said. “Wednesday, Thursday we may receive some moisture, but that is going to bring some dry lightning. We aren’t out of the woods yet.”