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WASATCH-CACHE NATIONAL FOREST — As wildfires rage in California, evacuating thousands from their homes and blackening miles of land, Utah firefighters are carefully planning the best strategies to handling the 10 fires currently burning across the state.
Dave Whittekiend, forest supervisor of the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest, said that quickly putting out a fire is not always the solution and that sometimes firefighter safety is the priority.
“We look at different options for every single fire,” Whittekiend said.
He said that in some areas, firefighters might allow a fire to continue to burn in order to reduce fuels, which is the approach Utah firefighters are taking to handle the Mineral Fork Fire in Big Cottonwood Canyon.
Whittekiend said letting fires burn can be controversial.
“Eventually, they will burn,” he said. “We’d like them to burn in a more controlled way. We don’t want to have large catastrophic fires.”
He said that even though there are four fires in northern Utah that firefighters are not working to put out, they are still watching them closely.
“We are managing these fires,” he said. “We have people on the ground. We are watching everything that it does.”
Whittekiend said one of the fires was started by an abandoned campfire and that making sure campfires are fully extinguished is critical.
The Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest has provided a list of campfire tips on their website for all visitors to read thoroughly.
Related link:
Campfire tips from Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest:
Many wildfires are caused by human activity, typically escaped campfires from dispersed campers. Campfires are allowed when you are dispersed camping unless there are fire restrictions in effect due to high fire danger conditions. It is your responsibility to know if fire restrictions are in effect before you go camping.
