Crews literally fought fire with fire after the Rocky Canyon Fire sparked Aug. 7 near East Canyon State Park.
On Aug. 9, when it was growing rapidly, flames raced toward the firefighters’ camp along state Route 65.
Spokesperson Elisha Hornung said crews had to act fast to prevent the fire from reaching their tents.
“They’re scouting it, it’s coming up and over, and it’s like, ‘Oh boy.’ So, they had people with torches — they were lighting it to backburn,” she said.
By burning the fuel before the wildfire could, they prevented flames from jumping over the highway into their camp in the state park.
Along state Route 65 in Summit and Morgan counties, the ground is blackened with soot, and trees and bushes are reduced to dead branches. The smell of the recent fire is pervasive. But there are also farmhouses that survived, surrounded by ash, and horses grazing just outside the burn scar.
Riley Bergseng, who’s been fighting wildfires for 22 years, said extreme fire behavior made it difficult to attack at first.
“I was under the column when it was coming out, and yeah, it was some very intense fire,” he said. “It was almost like a fire tornado that just — there’s nothing we could do.”
That first weekend, firefighters were focused on keeping people safe and defending structures; conditions didn’t allow for containment efforts.
“We are out scouting Lewis Peak, Tollgate, Parleys, Mountain Dell, Henefer — like, where’s it going to go in the next 24, 48, 72 hours, and what can we do in the next shift to get prepared for that?” he said.
Firefighters feared the fire could split into two “heads” burning in different directions. On Aug. 9, they fought until midnight to prevent that from happening.
“We had this big push to the east we were super concerned about, but we locked in the entire heel of the fire,” Bergseng said. “We had no spots, and we were able to grab it.”
Over 300 people were working the blaze at its most intense, including highly trained hotshot crews from all over the country, Very Large Air Tankers and other air resources.
Bergseng said some local farmers used their own equipment to help carve dozer lines into the fields above Henefer.
Firefighters guided the fire along the ridge to prevent it from dropping down into town. Bergseng is a fuels specialist for the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. Pointing up at the ridge, he said it wasn’t a “clean” burn in the cliffs – the fire left some fuel still available to burn.
Those pockets of green, combined with the tricky terrain, mean there’s still a lot of work to be done, even though crews have contained much of the perimeter.
“You see the fingers of oak all on this east-facing aspect, and we have to touch every single piece of that by hand to make sure that there is nothing that can reignite with any type of wind,” he said. “Now we’re looking OK. We can put people in more risky locations, where we’re feeling good that we won’t be threatened and can go direct.”
Bergseng said fire behavior looks different now from when he joined the U.S. Forest Service two decades ago.
“I always said, you know, ‘This can't happen here. This isn't possible.’ You know, we're not like California; we don't have the fuel type,” he said. “And then, after some of the fires in 2018 down south near Nephi and Spanish Fork, and watching flanking fire at 3 in the morning, 30 feet high, pushing through pure aspen stands, I changed my tune.”
The Rocky Canyon Fire was human-caused. Details remain under investigation.
Wildfires have burned over 537,000 acres in Utah so far this year.
