The Wildfire Preparedness Fair, a collaborative event sponsored by Wasatch Back homeowners associations, will return this month bigger than ever — and organizers say it’s especially poignant this year. 

The event, scheduled for Saturday, April 25, at Ecker Hill Middle School, is hosted by 11 homeowner associations across Summit and Wasatch counties — up from seven last year.

“If I can pat ourselves on the back for a minute: We realized early that it really is a collective, community effort. It’s not just one HOA. We abut many others in our various communities, so it really is a collective effort. We’ve really doubled down on that notion for this year,” said Angie Kell, an organizer and Glenwild Homeowners Association member.

The event was held at Pinebrook Park last year, but with a better venue, organizers are planning a panel discussion to bring a variety of experts for a conversation.

“Last year, we just had some speakers kind of individually address their topics. This year, we’re doing a panel discussion that … I think is going to be incredible. So it’s a big step forward,” said organizer Pamela Nieroth.

Nieroth, who is part of the education and community outreach subcommittee of the wildfire committee for the Glenwild HOA, said last year’s fair was a chance to get their toes wet.

“We didn’t advertise it widely because we really weren’t sure how it was going to go, how many people we could accommodate,” said Nieroth. “We were so pleased with the results that, this year, we decided to really push the boundary a little bit more.”

A record low snowpack has heightened homeowners’ concerns about an active fire season in the Wasatch Back, especially as the community becomes more aware of the threat of wildfires. But recent legislation also makes the preparedness fair a relevant resource, said Pinebrook Fire Safety Committee Co-Chair Don Brown.

State lawmakers passed House Bill 48 last year in an attempt to mitigate wildfire risks in wildland urban interface areas, or WUIs: zones where human developments overlap open spaces relatively untouched by humans. In the 2026 legislative session, H.B. 41 extended the deadline to comply with last year’s law to Jan. 1, 2027.

The bulk of the legislation is directed toward homeowners, including a new annual fee between $20 and $100 for homeowners within a WUI, with the specific amount determined by the taxable square footage of the property.

The funds will go back to Utah Forestry, Fire and State Lands to pay for assessors, who will evaluate properties within the WUI to decide whether homeowners are complying with fire-resistant or “hardened” building requirements.

“I think House Bill 48, and subsequently House Bill 41, have brought an awareness that didn’t exist before. It’s good-intentioned legislation, but it’s going to create its own set of challenges for us to address,” Brown said.

And it’s introduced a lot of confusion, Nieroth said, which is why a big chunk of this year’s fair will focus on clarifying the requirements for the Wasatch Back.

“I think a lot of homeowners have questions about it, and we see this as an opportunity to hear directly from the folks who are knowledgeable: ‘Yes, you’ll need to do this. No, you won’t need to do that. How is the map going to work?’” Nieroth said. “It’s complicated, and there are lots of points of view, and we’d like people to have accurate information.”

Brown said his conversation with panelists should get into the weeds of the legislation. Six experts are invited to the discussion, including Paul Borrup, president of SentryWest Insurance Services; Peter Emery, fire chief of the Park City Fire District; Fielding Norton, executive director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy; Taiga Rohrer of Utah Forestry, Fire and State Lands; David Telian of Alpine Forestry; and J. Bradley Washa of Utah State University.

Audience questions will also give attendees the chance to hear directly from industry professionals, and many will be available before and after the discussion for the tabling portion of the event.

Twenty groups will be set up in the lobby of Ecker Hill and ready to share information on home-hardening options or specific services. 

Alpine Forestry, Sav-A-Tree, Apex Fire Protection, SentryWest Insurance Services, Biochar Collective, Summit County Emergency Management, Summit County Open Lands, Utah Open Lands, the Rowland Hall Climate Studies Program and the Wildfire Defense Mesh initiative are some participating organizations.

Kell said the goal is to provide local, readily available solutions for homeowners.

“Let’s say, what are five things that you can do to harden your home?” Kell said. “So we provide the what, and we’re going to provide the who, who can help you do that.”

She also said this year’s fair is intentionally designed to get younger kids involved, from a Girl Scouts-hosted kids station with wildfire-related coloring pages to a demonstration that gives kids the chance to use biochar as chalk. Students from the climate studies program at Rowland Hall will also present information from a school project during the event.

“We made a deliberate effort to cross the generational gap and start educating kids as to wildfire awareness,” she said, “as well as people who are actually doing the work.” 

The event will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and free bagels and cream cheese donated by The Bagel Den will be available in the morning. La Lupe and Chili Spot food trucks will also be on site for lunch. More details can be found on their website posting.

Kell said anyone is welcome to swing by — not just homeowners in participating neighborhoods — because preparedness is a whole community effort. It may sound obvious, but fire doesn’t care about property limits. 

“Everyone recognizes Round Valley is powder already. It’s dirt. The dirt is super dry. And so I think the onus is on us with the wildfire fair to bridge that gap: OK, so what does that mean for you as a homeowner as we look toward wildfire season? And I think that’s really where the rubber meets the road,” Kell said.

It’s not a panic, but a call to action, Brown added. 

“It’s not doom and gloom. It’s just another summer, but we are now paying attention,” he said. “And with this knowledge, this information, we can get ahead of the greater risk later by doing reasonable things now.”

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Save People Save Wildlife, a nonprofit organization dedicated to lowering the number of vehicle-wildlife collisions in Utah, is raising money to fund an independent study that would analyze the need and effectiveness of a wildlife overpass on S.R. 224.

“This isn’t even the whole length of 224,” said Erin Ferguson, president of the animal advocacy organization, about the high number of collisions in the Summit County area. “This is Kimball Junction to Kearns Boulevard where 248 intersects 224, and it’s already up to 47 animals [in 2024] just in that partial section of 224. It’s 90%-plus higher than the 10 year average of the recent UDOT-commissioned studies, so we have a problem. It’s a public safety issue. It’s a wildlife safety issue.”

Since its inception in 2015, Save People Save Wildlife has been working with the Utah Department of Transportation and the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources to build wildlife overpasses. The wildlife crossings allow deer, elk and other animals to safely cross highly trafficked areas without being hit by cars or affecting traffic patterns.

In April, UDOT rejected Save People Save Wildlife’s proposal to build an overpass over S.R. 224, stating that the high-cost structure would not do enough to solve the issue. The S.R. 224 corridor has an average of 30,000 road trips a year and has been identified as the fifth worst highway in the state with 2.97 vehicle-wildlife collisions per mile.

John Gleason, a spokesperson for UDOT, said in April that a wildlife overpass would cost tens of millions of dollars and that UDOT’s analysis found it wouldn’t be a feasible solution.

“We’re not convinced it would accomplish the goal,” he said. “It would transport the animals into a neighborhood, and that wouldn’t be a safe place for them to go. You would just be transferring the issue over.”

Save People Save Wildlife disagrees, though, and the nonprofit is now working on funding its own study with a well-known analyst who has worked on large projects in other metropolitan areas.

“We’ve consulted with Robert Rock and Associates. They’re the landscape architect firm that designed the Wallis Annenberg crossing, the Liberty Canyon cougar crossing in LA,” Ferguson said. “They’ve done the preliminary assessment, and he wants to get a team of specialists together to design the most appropriate types of crossings, so that could be undercrossings, overcrossings, but make it an extension of the landscape.”

Ferguson said Save People Save Wildlife has received letters of support for “wildlife connectivity” from Summit County officials and the Park City Chamber of Commerce.

“These are all signs that are little steps towards collaborative efforts that will lead to the implementation of safe passage,” she said.

Right now, Ferguson said that the nonprofit is about one-third of the way to its fundraising goal of $250,000 for the Rock and Associates study. Once underway, the study would analyze the environment, including water, land, flora and fauna that would be affected, as well the viability and effectiveness of a possible overpass.

Assuming the results of the study line up with what Save People Save Wildlife expects, the next step would be to fundraise again and apply for grants to design and build the overpass. The organization would also need to work with UDOT on permitting since the agency owns the land where the structure would be built.

“We’re getting there, but again, the sooner we get the funding for the study, the sooner that can come to fruition and the sooner we can present our findings to UDOT and make our case and hopefully, pun intended, bridge the gap to accomplishing crossing placement and go from there,” Ferguson said.

Representatives from both UDOT and DWR said there are no updates on plans for wildlife crossings or any other vehicle-wildlife collision mitigation efforts in the S.R. 224 area as of now. Despite that, Save People Save Wildlife plans to continue its collaboration with the agencies, as well as other key stakeholders in the Park City area, as it moves forward with the process independently.

“With the transit improvements that are planned for these roadways, we should incorporate wildlife crossings in there as well,” Ferguson said. “It just seems logical from where we’re sitting, but we constantly are educating ourselves and trying to understand everyone’s point of view and consider everyone’s point of view that would be affected by our desired changes on this roadway.”

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The Elks First Responders awards gave credit to members of the Park City Police Department, Fire District and more for being outstanding service-members to the community Sunday evening, August 21, 2016. The event was held at Rotary Park and featured a BBQ for dinner. (Photos by Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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