This year’s Wildfire Preparedness Fair drew roughly 400 people to Ecker Hill Middle School on Saturday — quadruple the turnout of the inaugural event — and signaled a notable shift in how seriously Summit and Wasatch County residents are approaching wildfire risk.
“We’re thrilled,” said organizer Pamela Nieroth, who is part of the education and community outreach subcommittee of the wildfire committee for the Glenwild Homeowners Association. “My personal goal was 200 (attendees), so we’re very happy.”
A panel discussion that stretched close to two hours anchored the day, while the lobby hosted a dozen booths with information from forestry companies to fire agencies. Outside, a biochar demonstration by Circle Forestry gave a more hands-on explanation of local management initiatives.
It was busy, and many of the attending homeowners were already well informed, said many of the professionals staffing booths.
Abby Weiss, office operations manager for Apex Forestry, said the group expects a busy season with plenty of home-hardening projects like installing wildfire mesh and vents.
“I don’t think we had as many of those projects going on two years ago, and I think people are becoming more aware that it’s more helpful to actually reduce the risk of the structure itself, reduce the risk of embers,” she said. “It’s been cool to talk to people who are aware already of the risks.”
For Summit Park residents Tim and Denise Martin, the subject of wildfire preparedness isn’t just theoretical.
The couple has lived in the neighborhood for 23 years and were among those evacuated during the 2021 Parley’s Canyon Fire. Even before relocating from Grand Junction, Colorado, they understood the risks associated with living in the heavily forested community.
“Our friends had lived in Summit Park, and I know someone who had been evacuated two times … from almost the same problem: a car coming up Parley’s that started a flame,” said Denise.
The Martins have evacuated at least twice and have had to be ready to go more than that. Those experiences have reshaped how they think about preparedness. Rather than scrambling during an evacuation, they now have a “go bag” and are even considering storing essential items in a security box.
“One time it happened, my daughter was home, and we were up vacationing,” said Denise. “I was telling her what to get, and she was taking pictures off the wall. … She was a wreck. So, it’s real.”
At the preparedness fair, the couple came with a few specific questions — like, what’s the plan with slash piles in nearby open spaces, and are the panelists advocates of rooftop sprinkler systems?
And of course, the elephant in the room: the insurance dilemma.
“That’s a big one because, if you can’t get insurance, you can’t sell your house because the bank won’t loan money,” Tim said. “It changes everything. Instead of all these million-dollar houses, you got houses nobody can get a loan on.”
While they have not personally faced insurance denial, they said the issue is increasingly affecting neighbors and friends.
It’s why a good chunk of the panel discussion centered on the topic, specifically ironing out some confusion around the recent House Bills 48 and 41 regarding insurance in the wilderness urban interface, where developed areas intersect open lands.
Panelists Paul Borrup, president of SentryWest Insurance Services; Fielding Norton of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy; and Taiga Rohrer with Utah Forestry, Fire and State Lands were included in a discussion moderated by Pinebrook Fire Safety Committee Co-chair Don Brown to specifically answer those questions.
“I think the Utah Bill does a lot of things to inform and provide some type of standardization,” explained Borrup. “The Utah bill says, ‘This is our map. We want this map to inform your wildfire modeling’ … and to provide some justification so that you don’t feel like things are just arbitrary when a decision is made.”
Those bills are designed to improve transparency, the panelists said. The laws also establish funding mechanisms for property assessments and mitigation oversight, though they stop short of guaranteeing insurance availability.
“I think there are a lot of things that this bill does do right: that transparency, the mapping, the common standard, and a recourse if you get declined or non-renewed or your premium goes up too much,” said Norton. “But it doesn’t really prevent those things from happening. … It doesn’t guarantee ongoing coverage. It doesn’t guarantee that your rates won’t go up.”
Norton emphasized maintaining insurability will depend heavily on both individual and collective action.
“I would say that insurers are more likely to look at your home favorably if you’re part of an HOA that has rules that are enforced, actions have actually been taken and documented, so that you’re not just an island in the middle of your HOA,” Norton said. “You have the ability and agency to reduce and manage your own risk, but collectively, you get an amplifier effect if your HOA is also doing that, because it’ll help keep you insurable.”
Norton also reminded homeowners that they must actively communicate mitigation efforts to insurers.
Another major goal of the preparedness fair is to educate homeowners about the things they can do. The panel conversation repeatedly returned to the concept of home hardening as a critical line of defense.
“If there is a weakness, embers on a wildfire will find it. So it’s important to harden your home,” said Rohrer. “A lot of those things to harden your home aren’t as expensive as replacing a wood-shingled roof. … but things like (screening) your vents, making sure you don’t have firewood piled underneath your deck.”
Many attendees had heard about creating a defensible space — something panelists J. Bradley Washa of Utah State University, Park City Fire Chief Peter Emery and Alpine Forestry co-founder Dave Telian discussed — but Rohrer emphasized the need to go beyond that.
“It implies that there’s someone there to defend your house, and on a large wildfire, that is not realistic. You need to shoot for survivable space. Not like you stay in the house while wildfire goes through, but your house surviving on its own, without any input, without a fire engine in the yard, any sprinklers set up, anything like that,” Rohrer said.
Emery explained that a good first step is to have someone like the Park City Fire District come do a home assessment on a property, where they can identify areas that may have the highest risk. He also encouraged collaboration with homeowner associations as a resource to “get the whole community moving in the same direction.”
“I just really want to emphasize the importance of making your voice heard in this conversation as a whole and bumping that up through your committees and your boards and your local elected officials,” Telian added. “Everybody has a channel to get involved, and no idea is necessarily a bad idea. It’s going to take a community and a village to really bring all this together.”
From a big-picture lens, Washa reminded attendees — both in the discussion and in a wildfire walk scheduled after lunch — about the need for acceptance of fire.
“We need to recognize that fire is a natural process, and within Utah, the majority of our ecosystems are what we call fire dependent,” he said.
It’s a conversation that’s slowly trickling down to the younger generation, too. During the mingling time, students from Rowland Hall presented research projects they’d completed connecting climate science to wildfire risk in Summit County.
“I think it’s really important to learn about your own environment, instead of just learning broad topics,” said Allie Loewen, a sophomore. “Summit County is known for all of its beautiful greenery and all of its trees. And some people don’t realize that all that beautiful greenery is a bunch of fuel.”
Her research showed how shorter, warmer winters can extend fire seasons and increase the availability of fuels, leading to more destructive fires.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, she said.
“Just picking up things like pine cones or dead leaves or any dead plants (around your home) can really help fire not spread as much,” Loewen said. “And so just knowing that you as an individual, even as a young person, can do small steps to make fires less destructive in your community, it makes you feel a lot better about the scariness of all.”