Residents in parts of Summit and Morgan counties are under evacuation orders due to the fast-growing Rocky Canyon Fire.
But an emergency notification erroneously sent to many more people caused confusion Sunday, Aug. 9. The warning, meant only for parts of Henefer, reached large portions of Summit and Wasatch counties.
That caused confusion for many Wasatch Back locals, who thought they needed to evacuate immediately.
Francis resident Heather Sims said she ran outside to scan the ridgeline for signs of fire. She and her husband thought there might be a new wildfire nearby.
“The scary thing when it did come through, when it said, ‘Your residence has been placed in GO status; evacuate now’ – I think because there was no context, immediately the adrenaline kicks in.”
One of her friends had the car packed before learning the alert didn’t apply to their area.
The situation was especially scary for Spanish-speaking residents, according to Maria Villar.
“Unfortunately, they never got the notification in Spanish saying that the alert was false – that they didn’t need to actually proceed with the evacuation,” she said.
She said she knows several Park City families who left home because of the alert.
“It was terrifying because, you know, they have language barriers,” she said. “They don’t know where to get more information, other than, ‘Go now, go now.’”
Still, Villar said the silver lining is that families now know what they need to do and what items they would take in case of a true evacuation.
Sims agreed.
“It kind of was like a dress rehearsal of, okay, if this happens for real, we need to potentially put together an area where those family photo albums and those critical documents and whatever we really do need to take, needs to be accessible and quickly able to grab,” she said.
In a statement, Summit County spokesperson Skyler Talbot said when the county learned people outside the Henefer area got the emergency alert, it immediately notified dispatchers, media and leaders in every county in Utah.
Talbot said the county’s priority was protecting the lives of those who needed to evacuate. That’s why Summit County chose not to use the same emergency system to issue the correction.
“Our concern was that people who needed to evacuate could receive conflicting information and mistakenly believe the evacuation order no longer applied to them,” he said.
He assured county residents the emergency alert system is working correctly.
