Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
HERRIMAN — Volunteers from all around the Salt Lake Valley gathered to help reseed the Rosecrest Fire burn scar Saturday morning to help prevent property damage from potential mudslides and debris flow.
"We have approximately 450 volunteers," Nicole Martin, a spokeswoman for Herriman City said. "They will head up on the mountain, get a 20 pound bag of seed and they have their assigned area, and they'll throw the seed in there and we'll start to see the work happen."
Herriman City and Salt Lake County coordinated with The Natural Resources Conservations Service to fun the seeding efforts. The NRCS covered 75 percent of the $150,000 cost of reseeding the burn area. Salt Lake County and Herriman City funded the remaining balance.
The Rosecrest Fire burned 611 acres from June 29 to July 2 and caused an overnight evacuation for residents near the area. About 400 acres were reseeded Saturday.
"Really, once a fire starts, even before it's contained, you are thinking about the mitigation of the soil right after that," Martin said. "Today we need to get the seed in the ground so it can start to grow and hold that soil in place because the last thing that we want is any more property damage."
Related:
Fire cleanup begins for residents of Herriman
Parts of Herriman went up in flames Friday, but now, the clean-up effort is underway. The biggest problem for many residents is something they didn't plan for.Families, friends, the Herriman High School football team and youth groups were among those to help reseed by spreading 20 pound bags of seed each in the burn scar Saturday.
"We're with the South Jordan Youth Council, we're a group of about 70 people, and it's youth ages 14 to 18," Sharlene Nauta of South Jordan said. "We know we've had a few fires in the area, and so anything we can do to help. I have a lot of friends who live over here so it's nice to do something to help them out."
Nauta said she was really surprised at how much of the mountain side had been burned in the fire.
"It's really burned though, you can really see the effects that the fire had on it, I didn't think it was this big of an area that's been burned but I guess we have had a few fires," Nauta said. "It's pretty bad but hopefully the seeds will help it out."
One youth council member said she volunteered because the large reseeding effort required many volunteers.
"It would take them days and probably months to do this alone, so if they get help then it works a lot better and goes a lot faster," Savannah Allen said.
Email:jfinley@desnews.com
