The sounds of crackling flames consuming cheat grass could be heard in a mostly empty valley west of Tooele. Billows of smoke drifted up and around firefighters dressed in yellow fire gear as they lit the mountainside on fire.

Fire officials set the north end of the west-facing slope of the Stansbury Mountains in Skull Valley on fire Tuesday as part of a prescribed burn.

The 231-acre Timpie Point burn, just off I-80 at Exit 77, was done by the West Desert District of the Bureau of Land Management to decrease the number of future fires in an area that is plagued with them each year. In addition, the burn was aimed at reducing fire suppression costs.

Each year, roughly three to five fires are started at Timpie Point, according to Brook Chadwick, burn boss for Tuesday’s burn as well as fuels program manager for the West Desert District of the BLM. The frequent blazes have allowed cheat grass to grow prolifically.

Last year there were four fires at Timpie Point — all of which were started by target shooting. One of those, the Timpie Fire, charred more than 1,500 acres over one weekend.

“This is a problem area,” Chadwick said. “It’s a problem with tracers, which are illegal, and shooting.”

Besides reducing hazardous fuels in the event of a fire, prescribed burns are also done for ecological benefit.

“We’ve been suppressing fires so actively for the past 100 years that there’s been an impact that’s visible on the landscape,” said Teresa Rigby, fire mitigation and education specialist with the West Desert District of the BLM.

Areas that haven’t been burned for many years are dense with plant life and often need to be burned to promote healthier vegetation growth.

“We go into areas to allow the natural cycle of the renewal process to occur,” she said. “That growth is needed periodically to create some diversity in the ecosystem.”

Prescribed burns also create mosaic patterns across the landscape so there’s a variety of habitat for vegetation, wildlife and even human uses like grazing.

Rigby said if a fire comes through an extremely overgrown area, it can devastate it by burning extremely hot and intense, which she said can “essentially cook the soil,” causing erosion problems. A prescribed burn in that same area won’t burn so intensely, and will allow natural wildfires to occur later without such devastating effects.

Since the decision on what areas to burn isn’t solely based on reducing hazardous fuels, fire officials also speak with wildlife and range specialists to determine what areas could benefit from burns to renew growth and help wildlife.

“We don’t just go and throw a dart at a map,” she said.

Prescribed burns are a practice the BLM has been doing since the 1970s, but only since about 2001 has the tactic been actively pursued in the West Desert District — formerly called the Salt Lake Field Office — with staffing and specialists to handle the burns.

She said fire officials have found not only prescribed burns to be successful, but other fuel-reduction efforts as well.

Two fires on the west side of the Stansbury Mountains started within minutes of each other last summer during a lightning storm. One, the Broons Fire, was within the area of a fuel break that had been created earlier by juniper removal. That fire was contained within a couple of hours at under an acre. The other fire, the Muskrat Fire, was not in a project area and grew larger, taking several days to contain.

Chadwick said the estimated cost of Tuesday’s burn would be $12,000, while a one-day fire event could cost $13,000 and longer fires can even cost $80,000 — as the Timpie Fire did last year — in suppression efforts.

“If we spend $10,000 or $12,000 now, we may prevent a few $80,000 fires later,” he said.

A team of more than 25 people were involved in the burn. Tools used by BLM personnel Tuesday included drip torches, fuses, and flare guns that when fired project out a shower of sparks.

“It gets fires into an area you wouldn’t be able to get to,” Chadwick said, which was beneficial in the area’s steep topography.

Weather conditions need to be within a certain prescription for a burn to go forward, including wind, which was a concern for BLM officials Tuesday, especially because of the burn’s close proximity to i-80. But as the burn commenced, the weather cooperated.

“It’s blowing smoke away from I-80, which is perfect,” Chadwick said as he monitored the situation from the base of the Stansbury Mountains.

Another concern with the smoke was for wildlife in the area.

BLM Wildlife Biologist Robin Naeve was monitoring a red-tailed hawk nest north of the burn to ensure the birds were OK.

“Red-tails are more tolerant to disturbance,” she said.

It’s planned that there will be a prescribed burn at Timpie Point every year because of frequent fire activity, according to BLM officials.

swest@tooeletranscript.com