Thus far, size and frequency of fires has been far less than in recent years

It’s been an unseasonably calm wildfire season this year, according to local firefighting experts.

Save a few small grass fires and blazes, mostly under 10 acres, things have been relatively quiet up until now — a time when in past years fire danger has been extreme and fires have charred hundreds and even thousands of acres.

According to Teresa Rigby, spokeswoman for the West Desert District of the Bureau of Land Management, in 2007 — a very busy fire year — almost 160,000 acres of BLM land burned in the entire northern Utah area, which accounts for 11 counties, with most of the BLM-fought fires that year in Tooele and Box Elder counties. This year, however, looks to be comparable to a lower fire year when less than 20,000 acres of BLM land are burned over the same area.

“So, if you look at it that way, we are way below the 20-year average, which is just above 50,000 acres [burned annually],” she said, adding there were some years in the early ‘90s with sparse fire activity, but since then there has been a very steady increase in fires, with new records being set for number of acres burned and number of fires.

“But this year is just an exception to it all,” she said. “Part of the reason we haven’t had as many fires is we haven’t had the lightning to this point that normally would spark a lot of fires.”

Rigby said lightning is by far the No. 1 cause of fires in Tooele County, although there are high incidents of human-caused fires. She also attributes the wet June as a factor in how this fire season has fared so far.

“In past years, we’ve all seen in Tooele County where fires will start burning at the first of June, but this year things just started out wetter and cooler than what we’re used to, so that put us behind,” Rigby said.

However, smaller fuels have dried out and are available to burn.

Rigby said the BLM this season has responded to roughly a dozen fires, which were nearly all human-caused, on BLM and private land scattered throughout the county. Most have burned less than 10 acres, although Rigby said the BLM responded to a roughly 70-acre fire at Dugway Proving Ground in June due to operations there, and assisted with a 30-acre fire sparked by lightning in the Sheeprock Mountains last week.

“Those were probably the largest fires we’ve had in the county,” she said. “Typically in June as soon as the cheat grass dries out we start to see fires and it’s easy for those to get quite large real quickly with a little bit of wind.”

Campfires, equipment and gunfire have been the primary causes of the small fires.

Kathy Jo Pollock, spokeswoman for the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest, said the only fire on Forest Service land in Tooele County she knows of was the blaze in the Sheeprock Mountains, which was suppressed fairly quickly.

“There haven’t been a lot of fires anywhere except in southern Utah,” Pollock said, attributing the slow fire season to a normal winter, wet spring and rain along with warmer temperatures.

Carolyn Linford, assistant fire chief for the North Tooele County Fire District, said she hasn’t seen many fires either, although she added it is the peak of the fire season.

“I think we could still get some pretty good ones, but so far it hasn’t been hardly anything,” she said. “And I’m hoping that’s how it stays.”

Linford said there are times when fires are present up until the end of September and October.

“So we’re still crossing our fingers,” she said.

She added that a lack of fires this year could mean a busy year next year.

“It can also mean that next year could be worse because everything gets taller and dries out faster,” Linford said.

Rigby said large fires are more the norm than the exception in Tooele County.

“Historically you can look at the record and it’s not uncommon to have a 20,000-acre fire at some point in the fire season,” she said.

Take the Kimbell fire, for example, which burned more than 14,000 acres in the Stansbury Mountains above Grantsville over the course of a week in 2007. Or the Little Bald Mountain fire, which burned more than 500 acres over a two-week period last year, resulting in mudslides on denuded hillsides that have closed South Willow’s upper three campgrounds this summer.

While fire danger is still present, it’s not as high as in years past.

“It doesn’t mean we won’t get a large fire, it just means the overall conditions aren’t as conducive as they have been in past years for large fires,” Rigby said.

But, she said, conditions are right for smaller fires.

“Our small stuff is ready to burn, but some of the larger fuels just aren’t as dry, and when that happens it kind of truncates the growth of large fires,” she said.

In addition, high winds that often occur in the desert haven’t been as prevalent. Rigby added typically they’ll see fires caused by fireworks, but that hasn’t been the case this year.

Still, Tooele County has accounted for more than half of the human-caused fires the BLM has responded to this year in the Salt Lake Field Office, which mostly includes Rich, Box Elder, Tooele and Utah counties.

However, the beginning of the fire season isn’t necessarily an indicator of what’s to come the rest of the season.

“There’s not a whole lot to tell so far this year,” she said. “But we still have all of August to get through and September, and those can be busy months for us. And then October as well can be busy in some years. We may be only halfway through the season.”

Temperatures as of late have been close to 100 degrees, and this week there is a dry wind blowing, Rigby said.

“Those are the kinds of conditions that turn the small fires into big ones real quickly and can change maybe the outcome of these things,” she said, adding there is also lightning in this week’s forecast.

Tooele County Fire Warden Roice Arnold said because of the wet spring, causing vegetation to dry out so late, the fire season could extend into November and possibly even into December.

Rigby urges the public to be careful and prepared when recreating in case of a fire. She encourages people to keep a fire extinguisher in a vehicle, and have extra water and a shovel.

“The bottom line is even though it hasn’t been as active a fire season, fires still get away from people quickly,” she said. “Don’t be deceived in what a fire can actually do. It grows exponentially. It grows out in an area, not in a straight line.”

Sarah Miley: swest@tooeletranscript.com