But they warn of flare ups as fuels dry out

The Marblehead fire that scorched 675 acres about 10 miles west of Delle last weekend is one of the worst blazes of a fire season that’s gotten off to a late start this year, according to local firefighting experts.

The fire, which began Thursday at about 5:30 p.m., burned primarily in grass, pinion pine and juniper north of I-80 mile marker 63. It was controlled Saturday evening, though the area is currently being monitored for flare-ups, according to Marshall Thompson, public affairs officer for the BLM.

“It’s standard protocol when we have a decent-sized fire like that over 100 acres that even after it’s called out they’ll send an engine out periodically for an hour or two during the hottest parts of the day,” he said.

Thompson said the fire was caused when a raven flew into a power line.

“The investigation turned up that it was a raven that had flown into a power line and caught fire,” he said. “It basically touched the power box up on the power pole. It obviously killed the bird, and it ignited and fell to the ground.”

At the height of the fire, resources included nine engines, two 20-person hand crews, a helicopter and two single-engine air tankers.

Thompson said the area around Delle is more at risk from fires than it has been in the past.

“Typically at this time of year it definitely starts becoming a real high fire risk area out in the west desert,” Thompson said. “Especially this year, our cheatgrass fuel loading is above our 13-year average and the highest fuel loading in five years.”

Tooele County Fire Warden Paul Christensen said the fire season is running about two weeks later than usual.

“As far as fire activity goes, it’s pretty much just average for a normal season,” he said. “We’re not seeing a lot of real rapid large fire growth quite yet, but there are still the concerns with fuels. There’s a lot of continuous fuel and that is one of the issues that, if the hot and dry weather continues, could end up creating some issues. But for the most part we’re just on an average year so far — not really sitting above average or anything yet.”

But as far as burned acreage goes, Christensen said the county is actually below average, with between 2,500 and 3,000 acres burned thus far. Last year, the Big Pole fire alone charred nearly 44,000 acres in Skull Valley and the Stansbury Mountains.

“We did have the Marblehead fire, which was almost 700 acres, and then we had the Delle fire, which ended up being a little over 1,000 acres, and we’ve had a few 10-acre and 30-acre fires,” he said.

For the past three weeks, Christensen said there’s been a fire roughly every two to three days. Most have been in the 10-foot-by-10-foot range, though there have been a few that have been an acre. On the Fourth of July, there was a 45-acre fire at mile marker 41 off SR-36 near the south side of Stockton. The cause of that fire is still under investigation.

The other fires have been from a variety of causes, ranging from fireworks, roadside causes — people towing trailers and a chain sparks or broken headlights — lightning strikes, a bird on a power line and shooting.

“It hasn’t been excessive with any one thing,” he said. “It’s been spread out, which is good. That makes it nice as far as we can count on people being more cautious. That sounds like that’s really one of the biggest factors we’re seeing — people are being more aware of what’s going on.”

Christensen said in terms of what caused the slightly late start to the fire season this year, he follows indexes of the Farmer’s Almanac.

“Basically it seems to follow a pattern of 10 years of drought, two of moisture, seven years of drought, three of moisture,” he said. “We’re kind of on the tail end of that three years of moisture so it’s going to be a little bit more wet this spring and take a little bit longer for fuels to cure out, so we’re not seeing those cured grasses quite as early in the season. One nice thing with that is usually the higher elevations retain a little bit more green to them so they’re not quite as aggressive to burn up.”

He said that by no means is a prediction of what next year is going to bring, but the Farmer’s Almanac has served him consistently in the past.

“The farmers are kind of on to something as far as their documentation,” he said.

What the rest of the fire season will look like is anybody’s guess.

“I’m far from a fortune teller by any stretch of the imagination,” Christensen said. “It’s really hard to say. I’ve never been one to guess what a fire season really brings. You try and look at statistics and try and make an educated decision, but for the most part it is exactly that — you’d be guessing.”

Christensen recommends for the rest of the season that people make sure campfires are out, that they are aware of what is around them, and that they not put themselves in a situation where they could be sparking a fire.

He remains optimistic about the fire season so far this year.

“I feel pretty good about it,” he said. “I think that the interagency folks are all trying to stay on the same page and get on top of fires. So far we’re doing pretty good.”

Sarah Miley: swest@tooeletranscript.com