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Jed Boal ReportingLast summer five separate fires scorched the slopes above Davis County and threatened hundreds of homes. It also created another chronic flooding headache in Northern Utah. The US Forest Service doesn't want to see those scenarios again this summer.
Five separate fires burned nearly three thousand acres above Farmington and Centerville, and flames chased people from their homes. This spring and summer when the rains came, the barren slopes became saturated and mudslides poured in and around the same homes.
So US Forest Service fire crews started a clearing project to help reduce the risk of fire for the homeowners below.
Robert Sanders, U.S. Forest Service: “We're getting rid of all the oak brush on the uphill and downhill side of the road, to make easier access for emergency vehicles and for making a stand if there were a fire up on the hillside."
The idea is to widen the firebreak road, so that if there is a fire up in this area, the firefighters are battling the blaze up on the mountainside and not down in people's back yards.
Robert Sanders: “It's gotten real thick. It hasn't burned in this canyon. We've got a lot of old growth and dead underneath the oak brush."
And firefighters don't like to see a continuous supply of fuel leading from the wild lands into private lands.
Robert Sanders: “It's a big threat to the public. We don't want a fire on their land and posing a threat to their structures."
The Forest Service has never done this kind of clearing along the Wasatch Front.
Robert Sanders: “This is just the beginning here, we're going to start looking at areas to the north and the south."
The firefighters will clear 100 acres over three years. They'll finish this section in a week unless they're called off to fight fires. A prescribed burn could get the job done quicker, but it's a lot riskier. They don't want to start fires that close to homes, and prescribed burns raise the risk for mudslides.
