Recent rains eased fire danger temporarily on the Central Utah ranges and forests – but the potential hazard is still there and extreme care should be used in guarding against fire outbreaks.
“While the rains helped, a good hot afternoon can put us right back where we were,” noted Floyd A. Lundell of Benjamin, county fire warden.
Utah County, luckier than some areas, hasn’t gone unscathed. In fact, the fire a few weeks ago in the hills north of Alpine could have broken into an expensive residential area had firefighting efforts not been successful. Four city fire departments and a bomber dropping chemicals figured in suppressing the flames.
Santa Barbara, Calif., wasn’t so fortunate as flames leaped through the brush and from home to home in an expensive suburb. When the smoke had cleared away some 200 homes had been destroyed along with many other buildings.
One of the frustrating factors in recent weeks has been the large number of fires in the West caused by lightning. News dispatches only a few days ago said something like 400 in California alone had their origin from lightning.
Utah’s most tragic brush fire to date undoubtedly was the one in the Flaming Gorge region near the Utah – Wyoming border which claimed three lives when a wind shift caused a 20-foot wall of fire to engulf three firefighters from the Uinta Basin. This blaze was caused by lightning.
Another serious fire was the one in Juab County, with some 700 acres blackened in the vicinity of Mt. Nebo.
California fires, particularly the one at Santa Barbara, and the repelled threat as Alpine in north Utah County have demonstrated conclusively that people residing in the mountain and foothill face a special brush fire hazard.
Mr. Lundell suggests that such residents clean the brush away, plant grass, and remove weeds that fill in from time to time. Additional advice from the fire warden: Don’t allow anyone to play with matches; apply all fire prevention rules; and use common sense caution in all situations.
Right here in Utah County we have many residential areas extending into the hills – on Provo’s east benches, in the Alpine and Salem areas; in the canyons, etc.
Besides the sickening tragedy of lives lost and economic loss, fires can ruin vast areas of forest and range lands. Just the other day it was reported that scores of tires had burned 80,000 to 90,000 acres of brush and timberland in northern and central California.
Don’t take a chance. Be ever cautious. Prevent fire tragedy.