Tooele County firefighters: Beware of extreme fire behavior, including fire traveling underground

STANSBURY PARK — Heading into the Pioneer Day weekend, firefighters once again were urging caution Thursday, telling people to avoid lighting fireworks where they're banned while avoiding any other behavior that could lead to new fires.

North Tooele Fire District public information officer Jon Smith characterized fire behavior in the county this summer as extreme and "bizarre," as he pointed to a phenomenon where fire has traveled underground via root systems.

"It will appear on the surface to be out, but fire will be traveling through that dry soil under the root systems and will sometimes pop up over 100 yards away," Smith said during an interview with KSL. "Fire will not travel through the mineral layer, but you have layers of duff, dry vegetation, and that's where the root systems for juniper, conifer, sagebrush usually reside."

Smith said he witnessed the fire behavior himself during his department's response to a brush fire in late June in Lake Point.

"It was a human-caused fire, and we were standing in the fire ground, spraying water on it, and we were kind of looking toward a grassy area and thinking, OK, we've got to go through and cut a line there because we don't want this area going into that area," Smith recalled.

"Literally as we were discussing that, fire popped up 75 to 100 yards away from where we were standing, just right in the middle of the field, out of the ground."

Smith said firefighters believed the fire had traveled through the root system.

"Fire had traveled through that root system underneath that top level of soil, found itself a little bit of oxygen and chewed its way through, found itself an opening and popped right up," Smith said.

Smith said the behavior is less common in Utah but has been known to happen more frequently in places like the Pacific Northwest, where sometimes a couple of feet of dead vegetation line the forest floors.

Firefighter Sean McCloy demonstrated how crews cut trenches and lines down to mineral soil to clear all roots.

"You're going to cut through those roots and pull those out of the way, so that way those aren't acting as what you could think of like an underground fuse, almost," McCloy said. "We're really making a solid fire line that no fire can travel through, above ground or below."

Smith said the bottom line was that fire conditions continue to be extreme — even sometimes in surprising ways — and it's important for people to do whatever they can over the Pioneer Day weekend to avoid starting fires.

He said that meant knowing the local fire restrictions and not setting off fireworks in areas where they are prohibited — which he said meant the entirety of Tooele County.

"We're asking people to please obey those fireworks restrictions," Smith said. "Resist that temptation to light fireworks if you're in a restricted area. As firefighters, we're begging you. Literally, we are begging you."

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