Uintah, Wasatch, Cache NF-Facebook page
It’s fire season in Utah and the west and unfortunately fires are popping up across the state, such as fires in Washington County and near Eagle Mountain in Utah County that have caused evacuations. One fire that has been seen from Cache Valley is the Mountain Home fire near Ogden and the Ogden Valley.
On KVNU’s For the People program on Wednesday, Kim Osborne, the Public Information Officer for the Uintah, Wasatch, Cache National Forest said work continues on that fire
“Our firefighters are doing an excellent job right now. We’ve got some working along the lower edge, they’re feeling real secure about that, above the road, where there are some homes. The fire is about a quarter mile away from homes, there’s no worry there. We have some activity up on the top and so, we have about 70 to 80 firefighters up there that are working on the hot spots,” said Osborne.
She said they’ve had two helicopters working with ground units to help putting out those hot spots. And with fireworks season at the hottest, driest time of year fires can break out quickly.
“I was looking at the weather, and it’s all in the mid – upper 90’s the entire week. Our relative humidity (has)dropped, which means making the vegetation dryer. So it doesn’t take much to start a fire, so we’re coming up on the 24th of July and people need to remember that there’s no fireworks allowed on the national forest and we’ve got restrictions in other places as well. People need to be really heads-up with those fireworks. We had quite a few fires that started around (July) 4th. People not being careful.”
She said other recreational activities can cause fires such as ATV’s driving over tall grass, even vehicles driving on tall grass. Also there have been many unattended camp fires this fire that have caused fires.