Prescribed burns are fires that are intentionally set to reduce vegetation and avert a catastrophic wildfire. Such planned burns are common around mountain towns, but recognizing one really comes down to context clues.
“To a lay person, it all kind of looks the same. But I would point back to … the seasonality of things,” Alpine Forestry co-owner David Telian said. “We are officially out of fire season and into, you know, prescribed burn season.”
Alpine Forestry is a private contractor that conducts burns and manages vegetation for Park City-area homeowners associations, as well as the city itself.
Its crews have prescribed burns scheduled near the Ontario mine bench and on Treasure Hill, plus two projects near Royal Street in Deer Valley.
Fire officials ask residents not to report prescribed burns.
“But we do have a lot of visitors here, even this time of year, as well as have a major interstate running right through the valley,” Telian said. “And so it's not uncommon for our local dispatch center to get upwards of 20 to 30 or more calls in a single day, you know, reporting a wildfire.”
Prescribed burns, including those conducted by the U.S. Forest Service in the Uinta Mountains, may continue until the ground is completely blanketed with snow.
“There’s just a really good chance at this point that if you're seeing smoke out on the mountainsides, it was intentionally set and being managed by professionals on the ground,” Telian said. “We're just not in conditions right now that support wildfire ignition and growth.”
However, he said the schedule has been delayed by drier weather and inversion conditions.
According to Telian, Alpine’s crews don’t burn on days where valley inversions could prevent smoke from dissipating, which would be an air quality concern.
Utah Fire Info marks some, but not all, prescribed burns on its map here.
