It’s 6 in the morning Thursday, still dark, the features of fire camp illuminated by a handful of spotlights. A small wooden stage in a dirt clearing bears a tri-fold board lit up with an updated map of the Beulah Fire, which has been burning in the High Uintas Wilderness since Aug. 7. If you squint, that red-shaded outline of the fire looks like a misshapen chicken foot — by Friday morning, covering 5,637 acres.
A growing crowd fills in a semicircle around the map glowing like a beacon. This 6 a.m. start happens each day, rain or shine, when crew leaders gather for the morning briefing. Here the higher-ups — many, section chiefs — give other leaders the day’s updates, who then relay those details to their crews. The leaders, all men, line up on the side of the stage before taking the mic, copy-paste clones of each other in the dark: boots, green pants with cargo pockets, a puffy jacket, a hat, a scruffy beard.
The coffee-sipping audience silently hears tidbits like incoming thunderstorm weather, that’s the meteorologist talking; and erratic fire behavior, the specialist goes over what to expect; then there’s air attack need-to-knows; and reminders not to give in to fatigue. Finance does their little update, plus a quick plug: If interested in working finance for fires (it’s not so bad), come see him. There’s no applause between each speaker, but each leaves with their variation of “go get ’em.”
Incident Commander Steve Shaw wraps up the briefing as the overcast sky lightens to sapphire, providing a quick recap on Wednesday’s work.
Wednesday was significant because it was the first day hotshot crews were able to use fire to fight the fire. Using controlled fire to remove brush, trees and other fuels between the fire’s active edge and firelines, crews reduce the potential for the main fire to cross containment lines.
Shaw calls Wednesday a firefighter day rather than a fire day.
“There were some awesome shots from the air attack, lots of good burnouts and torching — all the cool stuff went on yesterday,” Shaw says. “Days of planning went into that, talking about line locations, talking about tactics, talking about strategies, talking about the values of risk, we talked about them a lot. There was a lot of implementation, a lot of debate, but a lot of things came together yesterday.”
He refers to the attack on the west side of the fire, which had spread up onto the ridgeline above Lorena Lake. That ridgeline was a crucial holding point, because just beyond there, the fire would have headed toward important structures like the Boy Scout camp and up toward homes in Manorlands and Uintalands.
Holding the fire at that ridgeline “really starts to lead us towards protecting the biggest chunks of our values of risk on the west side,” Shaw says.
Until Wednesday, most of the wildland firefighter’s work had been indirect attack, meaning not on the fire’s edge, due to the unsafe and rugged terrain. Incident Commander Clay Stephens, another of the three incident commanders leading the fire response, said having direct attack days like Wednesday’s work is not only good for getting a handle on the fire, but it’s also good for morale.
“Everybody loves going direct. It’s just more fun. You’re right on the fire’s edge. The fire’s more active. You’ve got that little adrenaline push that helps fuel you a little bit,” Stephens said. Whereas indirect attacks, like creating secondary control lines sometimes miles from the fire — “It’s hard to stay as motivated when you don’t have that active fire right there.”
Stephens said he gets it. He first started as a firefighter to pay for veterinarian school, and realized he “was having too much fun” and ended up making it his career. Eventually he worked his way up into leadership positions, a pretty common story for the incident commander-types. Days like Wednesday are highlights, he said, especially for some of his crews who had camped up on Lorena Ridge for the night.
“I was super jealous of the people camped out,” he said. “After having a good fight yesterday, right there, right in the middle of it, picking up piles of spots across their line, burning out, working with helicopters and all that, and then you wake up to the sunrise like we had this morning — those are magical mornings.”
He remembers those mornings throughout his career, and he also remembers some of the grueling days, stuck in the rain, below-freezing mornings, tedious indirect work. All of that contributes to how he makes decisions on the fire attack.
“I’ve also been the guy that’s just been stuck out there trying to hooch under a space blanket with lightning popping all around you. I don’t want to put other people in that situation. So it helps you relate to what’s going on,” Stephens said.
By Thursday, a large portion of crews who’d arrived with the Great Basin Complex Incident Management Team 4 were nearing their time out — at 14 days on the fire by Sunday. After so many 16-hour days, fatigue is always a concern. On top of that, many of these crews have made sacrifices to be out fighting: missing birthdays or anniversaries or their kids’ first days of school.
The general consensus, though, is that this batch — at most, 629 personnel — came eager and willing to work hard despite the not-so-exciting indirect attack orders. With a fire like Beulah that’s been burning in wilderness with heavy fuels, the goal is to have multiple control lines set up in case it spreads toward what firefighters call “values at risk.”
Justin Robinson, district ranger for the Evanston District of the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest, said the work these crews have done in creating not one, not two, but three rings of control line has been remarkable.
“That, to us, is huge because,” he held up fingers, “life and safety, property and then resources — we’re hitting all of those, between the fire behavior and the work that the team has put in.”
Robinson is also working as the agency administrator, meaning he’s a go-between of sorts where the fire management overlaps with the local area’s land management, plus any politics that comes into play. Originally from Logan, and now with five years as the district ranger, Robinson said he knows this land almost by heart. He also said he’s not surprised to see a fire like Beulah, especially because of the number of beetle-killed trees.
“We know that this area has the potential for large-scale fires,” Robinson said, pointing to grayed-out areas of the fire map that show the small Elisabeth Fire from 2024 and the East Fork Fire from 2002.
He explained that in the early 2000s, that area had around a 95% mortality rate of mature trees killed off by the mountain pine beetle and the spruce beetle, and 20 years later, those trees are dried, rotten and falling over. Firefighters call those snags, and they are major problem on this fire.
“It’s very conducive to large fire. All we need are the other things to line up, which is the weather,” he said.
According to the area’s energy release component report — a fuel moisture index that measures live and dead fuels and potential fire intensity of the vegetation — Robinson explained, “We have exceeded the highest levels we’ve ever recorded in the past this year because we’ve been so dry.”
“At the same time where it is, what it’s doing, is beneficial, because it’s cleaning up those dead fuels,” he said. Officials hope that a burn intensity report after the fire will look similar to last year’s Yellow Lake Fire: very minimal damage to the soil.
By Thursday, the goal was to continue the momentum, with a smaller Type 3 Incident Management Team taking over command on Sunday. With thunderstorms and scattered showers through the weekend, crews are keeping a close eye on the fire behavior, though with little hope that the rain will “put out” the fire. That’s more likely to happen come first snow, said Robinson.
Over the past two weeks since the fire started, it became clear to firefighters that rather than measuring their response as “containing” the fire, it’s more accurate to work on “completing” the fire. The difference? Containment refers to the percentage of a fire’s perimeter that’s been secured, shown on a fire map with a black line along the edge. Completion is the total number of objectives achieved that reflects on-the-ground efforts. When a fire burns in inaccessible terrain, it’s impossible to send crews to contain the fire, but actions like confinement, monitoring and point protection are still measurable indicators of control over a fire.
By Friday morning, the Beulah Fire was at 48% complete. Commanders were looking to hit 60% completion before beginning to turn the fire back over to local crews to monitor. At that point, it’s deemed pretty safe.
On Friday, those completion efforts continued, with five helicopters, 19 engine crews, 12 hand crews and two dozer crews continuing point protection work on the Tie Hack cabins and finishing up contingency lines near Fish Lake and Elizabeth Pass. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Robinson encouraged the public, all those who recreate in these areas, to stay informed and respect any closures due to this fire. While it’s hard to know what will happen post-fire, he anticipated some area closures may continue for safety reasons.
“As for long term getting used to fire, I don’t think we have a choice,” he said, especially with the fuels accumulating on the landscape. “All of that fuel has to come off. If it does end up being burnt, either by us or naturally, then we’re going to see it. … Fire on the landscape is real.”
To stay informed on Beulah Fire updates, as well as any closures to roads, trails and campgrounds, check the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest Facebook page: facebook.com/USFSUWCNF.