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Anonymous ID: b6972d Sept. 14, 2018, 10:49 a.m. No.3022424   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>2563 >>2709 >>2724 >>2801

Pole Creek Fire grows to 54,000 acres as some wonder why the Forest Service didn’t snuff it early

 

The Pole Creek Fire, which has forced entire communities in Juab and Utah counties to evacuate, has grown to 54,000 acres. A nearby blaze, the Bald Mountain Faire, has grown to 14,000 acres, said Suzie Tenhagen, a spokeswoman for the fire management team. There are no reports of destroyed structures as of Friday morning. She said about 300 firefighters are on the scene with more arriving today. Airplanes and helicopters will be dropping water or retardant on or around the blaze. "They are going to be trying to prevent that spread down in that area where homes are in the path of the fire,” Tenhagen said.

 

Residents in Covered Bridge, Woodland Hills and Elk Ridge have been ordered to evacuate. The Nebo Loop and U.S. Highway 89 are closed. U.S. Highway 6 was open Friday morning, though Tenhagen warned that could change quickly. The Utah Highway Patrol will close the highway if smoke obstructs visibility.

 

The Pole Creek Fire and the Bald Mountain Fire are still considered separate blazes, Tenhagen said. Lightning ignited both of them — the Bald Mountain Fire on Aug. 24; the Pole Creek Fire on Sept. 6. Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox on Thursday criticized the U.S. Forest Service for its earlier decision to let the Pole Creek Fire burn. On Sunday, the fire was reported to be ½ acre in size. It was 50 acres by the end of Monday and grew exponentially on Wednesday and Thursday. Weather forecasters all week long had warned of high fire danger in Utah.

 

Tenhagen on Friday morning said the Forest Service had been letting the Pole Creek and Bald Mountain fires burn in order to reduce fuels in the forests. Then forest managers were surprised by what Tenhagens called a “high wind event” as well as what meteorologists term a thermal belt. That’s when a zone of high nighttime temperatures and low humidity sits at a narrow altitude range. Tenhagen said a thermal belt arrived at the altitude where the fire was burning. "That was preventing the environment from kind of recuperating overnight, just keeping the humidity really low and just making it continuously dry,” Tenhagen said.

 

https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2018/09/14/pole-creek-fire-grows/

 

Note: No statements from Romney on this, also this Lt Gov..is interesting…

Anonymous ID: b6972d Sept. 14, 2018, 10:59 a.m. No.3022563   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>2709 >>2724 >>2801

Mitt Romney says that he’s a believer in climate change and that it will create more and nastier wildfires in Utah unless feds spend ‘a lot of money’ to help prevent them

 

U.S. Senate candidate Mitt Romney said Thursday that global climate change will make wildfires in Utah increasingly common and dangerous — so federal and state governments should spend big money to help prevent them and reduce their severity. “It means wildfires are going to become a regular part of life and more and more dangerous,” he said at the Utah Capitol during a U.S. House Natural Resources Committee forum about wildfires. “We have to recognize that business as usual is not going to solve the problem. We have to step up in a far more aggressive way.”

 

It came after his Democratic opponent, Jenny Wilson, earlier this month attacked a Romney essay that called for increased efforts against wildfires. She said he largely ignored climate change — referring to it obliquely as “climate realities” — and Wilson said addressing climate change as a crisis is the way to protect the West. While some key Republican conservatives question climate change, Romney made clear Friday that he believes it exists, and he said it requires big changes in forest management to prevent catastrophic wildfires. “I happen to believe that the global climate change that you are seeing is going to continue even if we see all of the nations of the world abide by the Paris Accord," he said. "We’re still going to get warmer and warmer as a planet,” leading to hot, dry conditions that fuel and intensify fires. The 2012 GOP presidential nominee added that wildfires in Utah and the West are “not just going to be ongoing but more severe” if nothing is done to prevent or mitigate them.

 

He proposed more work to reduce a buildup of fuels in forests, create more firebreaks and defensible areas around communities, establish more regional wildfire centers with aircraft and other equipment to quickly attack fires before they get big, and use more early-warning technology to identify fires as they start. “These things I described cost a lot of money,” Romney said. “I would propose that the financing of this major investment that is going to be required be split based upon who owns the land,” he said. “So the federal government has 66 percent of the land in Utah, so they pick up 66 percent of the costs. If they want a lower share of the costs, they can give the land back to us.”

 

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, asked Romney which of his several suggestions he would prioritize — saying Congress would likely fund only one or two. “The most important thing is — to do all of them,” Romney said. “The consequence of not combating in a very aggressive way these fires is the loss of human life, the loss of homes, the loss of structures, and a severe health impact for those of us who are breathing smoky air pretty much for the entire month, and on wildlife.”

 

The forum featured speakers from the U.S. Forest Service, state agencies, firefighters, academics and Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox. They universally called for more fuel reduction and better forest management to mitigate fires and their severity. State Forester Brian Cottam outlined how bad this fire season has been and predicted that worse blazes will follow if prevention work isn’t improved. Cottam said 186,000 acres have burned: “That’s 50 percent more than we would normally see." (His estimate did not include the fire that sparked Thursday evening in Weber and Cache counties, leading to the evacuation of Powder Mountain Resort.)

 

https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2018/08/31/mitt-romney-says-that-hes/

 

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