It was just 13 months ago when a giant plume of smoke rose over the West Side of Summit County as the Parleys Canyon Fire started to tear through the mountainous terrain off Interstate 80, close to the Summit County-Salt Lake County line.
The fire led to mandatory evacuations of Summit Park, Pinebrook and Timberline. Many of the people who were forced to leave headed to stay with family or friends, while others went to a shelter set up at the Park City High School gymnasium as the fire spread.
The Parleys Canyon Fire illustrated just how dangerous the threat of wildfires is to the Park City area, a place where development stretches into forested areas and resort infrastructure climbs the mountainsides. Neither the Parleys Canyon Fire nor the many others in Summit County over the years have been devastating to the broad community or economy, but nobody should be lulled into believing a wildfire someday could not wreak such havoc.
The Park City government, even without a fleet of fire trucks, is one of the entities that plays a key role in the response to a wildfire inside the city as well as in the surrounding area. City Hall and others tasked with preparing for and responding to wildfires have scheduled an evacuation exercise later in September that will be an important opportunity for political leaders, emergency officials and Parkites themselves to test the preparedness plans.
No exercise can ever duplicate an actual emergency, whether it is an earthquake, a mass shooting or a wildfire. There are too many variables and too many unexpected turns in any emergency that cannot be accounted for in an exercise. That is the nature of events like those.
Still, an exercise such as the one planned in Park City on Sept. 28 can be a step in guarding against the danger of chaos should a wildfire force evacuations. Parkites have an opportunity to learn about the key steps the community would take to save lives. It will be wiser to take part in the exercise than to wait until the next plume of smoke rises above the Park City area.
Registration information for the exercise is available on the municipal website, www.parkcity.org. The direct link is: https://www.parkcity.org/government/emergency-management/be-ready-park-city.