Monday evening, east side Summit County residents met at the North Summit High School auditorium in Coalville, and over Zoom, for an update on the fast-growing Rocky Canyon Fire.
Over 300 who logged on virtually at the start of the meeting joined around 60 in-person attendants. TV cameras and their operators lined the back row like snipers, pointed at a map of the fire footprint projected over the stage.
Husband and wife Steve and Julie, Coalville residents, were in the crowd. While the two hadn’t needed to evacuate, the fire had burned through some range land they own in Franklin Canyon near Henefer.
When they saw the smoke column get closer Saturday from their front porch, they ran over to Henefer to see what was going on. They’d leased the land for sheep grazing, and when the couple showed up, the shepherds were trying to get the animals moved from up on the Henefer Divide, which separates East Canyon from Franklin Canyon.
Then the fire jumped S.R. 65, and started moving fast, Julie said. Thankfully, the sheep got of and they moved their expensive equipment in time. But after the fire came through, it was decimated.
“Everything that burnt was right down to the ground. There’s not even a ghost tree. It’s just annihilated, that’s how hot it was,” Julie said.
She said from the base of Franklin Canyon, their car was covered in ash the size of golf balls.
“I went over and touched it. It wasn’t hot, but it was warm. It had white edges,” she said. “It’s those embers that jump.”
The fast-moving fire behavior on Sunday pushed the footprint from 4,000 acres to an estimated 15,000 by Monday morning. And like many of the residents tuning in to the community meeting, Steve and Julie wanted to know if that might happen again.
Mike Tatishi, the operations section chief for the Northern Utah Type 3 Incident Management Team, started the meeting with a rundown of the fire since it began Friday off S.R. 66 in Morgan County.
While crews did their best to hold the fire at around 150 acres that first afternoon, weather shifts pushed the blaze to the northeast toward Hogsback Summit, and it crossed the county line by Sunday morning.
From the southern end, which is the “heel,” around toward Hogsback saw some successful firing operations, Tatishi said, so his team is feeling confident in that area.
“Things are looking really good on the south end. Then we’ll just continue to hook around and go in as direct as we can and keep the fire footprint as small as we can,” he said.
Toward the front, Division Tango is the edge of the fire moving toward Henefer pushed by strong afternoon winds. In that area on Monday, Tatishi said firefighting resources have included dozers, aviation, engines and hand crews. Activity had been “fairly favorable.”
“As it gets down a little bit further to the north in some more favorable country, we can get after it with the heavy equipment,” he said. “We’ll continue those operations through the night.”
Division Whiskey is the east side of the fire, which is moving toward Coalville, he said.
“We had folks out there today poking around and looking for access points and where we’re going to hang up this fire here on the east side,” Tatishi said. “That’ll be a big shift in resources tomorrow over there to assist out in Division Whiskey.”
Incident Commander Garrett Nielsen said they have resources coming in from across the country, including help from the National Guard, and he assured residents that they were doing as much as possible.
“What makes fires challenging is if the communities aren’t supportive, but you guys have been amazing to work with,” he said. “Without you guys’ support, honestly, it makes this task really daunting. And the firefighters feel it.”
Nielsen said in some cases the offer of support, like volunteering to go out with the firefighters or donating food or money, is well meant but not helpful. Much better to give that time and money to the evacuees who have been displaced, he said.
“We’re taken care of. We do this day in and day out, and so take care of yourselves and let us support you with what we do on our day-to-day jobs,” he said.
Looking ahead, weather forecasts are “spicy,” Nielsen said, with potential rain systems with thunder cells that can produce gusty winds.
“When those come over, we typically don’t know which way the winds are going to go,” he said. “With the ones we’ve been seeing lately, we’re thinking one thing, and it does the exact opposite.”
So far no structures have been reported lost, Nielsen said.
Summit County Sheriff Kacey Bates addressed the evacuations, which were extended in Henefer Monday afternoon to include the homes west of Main Street.
“As your sheriff, I want everyone to know when it comes to evacuations that I do not take that lightly. I know it’s very serious, and I do not like displacing residents. But it’s with the utmost caution that when we do send those evacuations, we have talked about it with all of our partners, and we feel that that is the decision that is right for the community members,” she said.
She gave a rundown of the areas of the county that were in either “Ready,” “Set” or “Go” status.
In the next speech, North Summit Fire Chief Ben Nielson assured residents that their stations are still fully staffed to help with any other emergencies that may happen in his district, which he called “incidents within incidents.”
He said with the other fires across the state, like the 120,000-acre Widemouth Fire in central Utah, that resources are spread thin. So he asked people to “help us help you” by staying safe and avoiding the area if possible.
Summit County Councilor Tonja Hanson ended the meeting with a series of thank yous to the crews, volunteers and community members who have come together to help.
Fire officials stayed after to answer any questions from the in-person attendees, who mostly wanted information on what to expect, or if any new evacuation alerts would be sent out soon. All they could say is “hard to know” and “safety is a priority.”
For updates from Summit County: tinyurl.com/ke375sd3.