Chainsaws were buzzing Aug. 15 along the Summit County ridge that follows state Route 65 from East Canyon to the north edge of the Henefer Valley.
It had been just over a week since the Rocky Canyon Fire started and grew to about 16,000 acres.
Riley Bergseng, the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest deputy fire staff officer of fuels, said the sound was the tell-tale sign that the nation’s best were at work on the blaze.
“We've got Sacramento Hotshots... We've got Tatanka — they're from South Dakota, the Black Hills. Centennial from the [Caribou-Targhee National Forest],” said Bergseng, the deputy fire staff of fuels for the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. “Multiple overhead from all the way from the East Coast, the Dakotas.”
One plane overhead had traveled 8,000 miles from New South Wales, Australia. It was dropping retardant in the early days of the fire, when it was surging north and east toward the interstates.
Coulson Aviation operates the aircraft, a modified Boeing 737-300, which CEO Wayne Coulson said it sold to the Australian government.
“Part of our arrangement is, because we're in the winter down there, if there's work available for them in the North America market … that we'll offer these aircraft, air tankers, heli tankers, to customers here and put them to work,” he said.
Elisha Hornung, a spokesperson for the crews working the Rocky Mountain Fire, likened the western United States to a chessboard during the summer.
Multiple agencies must coordinate nationally and regionally to deploy resources to the largest and most threatening fires in real time.
Bergseng is part of the Northern Utah Interagency Type 3 Incident Management Team.
The Ogden native and Midway resident said the team is based in northern Utah specifically to respond to fires close to home: neighbors helping neighbors.
“Lots of ownership in this whole northern Utah area. [I] played football against the locals that own some of this property — and baseball,” he said of the residents who helped fight the Rocky Canyon Fire. “So it's like… Here we are. High five. Let's go.”
And when fires grow and more out-of-state resources come in, Bergseng said that brings its own rotating cast of familiar faces.
“One of the guys on Tatanka, his name's Doug, and he's like, ‘Oh yeah, I was one of your task force leaders on the Flat Anvil Fire in southwest Oregon, doing contingency,’ and that's like every fire I go to,” Bergseng laughed. “People are always like, ‘Oh yeah, you're that dude wearing Pit Vipers that was ramming us up the hill.’”
He says those relationships build trust. And that’s one of the most important firefighting tools, since as Coulson put it, “fire knows no borders.”
KPCW’s Grace Doerfler contributed to this report.
