Closet fire damages lodge at Snowbird
LITTLE COTTONWOOD CANYON -- Guests at Snowbird's Iron Blosam Lodge spent part of Tuesday night on their balconies after a fire in a fourth-floor storage closet filled the hallway with smoke, preventing them from evacuating.The fire started about 1 a.m., Salt Lake County Fire Capt. Bill Brass said. The closet contains an electrical panel and some cleaning materials. Investigators are focusing on a pile of cleaning rags as the possible source, Brass said.
Early estimates place damage to the hotel at between $25,000 and $30,000. The fire caused mostly smoke damage but gutted the closet and burned tops of several doors.
Firefighters found the closet fully engulfed and flames rolling along the ceiling of the hallway, which was almost completely filled with smoke, Brass said. Firefighters could hear hotel guests yelling for help but couldn't reach them.
No one was seriously injured. David Olsen, 37, suffered smoke inhalation and was transported to Alta View Hospital as a precaution, Brass said. He was later released. Three other people, including a toddler, were treated at the scene for minor smoke inhalation.
The fire was out within 30 minutes, but ifirefighters needed close to two hours to clear the floor of smoke.
Pleasant Utah weather is warmest recorded
Utah's autumn scorcher is ending with a bang: a record for the hottest weather this late in the year.
Searching through record books that extend into the last century, Utah's top meteorologist can find no other date when the high broke 80 degrees as late as Nov. 16. But it happened Tuesday at two stations.
St. George reached 81 while nearby Zion National Park recorded 82 degrees, said meteorologist William J. Alder. Until then, the latest date the thermometer had risen into the 80s was Nov. 15, 1932, when it was 82 in St. George.
Salt Lake City was downright chilly by comparison, reaching "only 63," as opposed to the normal high for the day of about 50.
Other locations with record highs this late in the year were Blanding, 69 degrees; Brian Head, 54; Coalville, 71; Heber City, 75; Midway, 70; Nephi, 76; Orem, 74, and Provo, 74.
By the middle of Wednesday morning a storm front had trundled through Elko, Nev., en route to Utah. It was to hit in the mid-afternoon with showers and possible snow in the mountains.
In fact, Alder said, homes on the urban bench areas could get "just a dusting" of snow overnight. The next front is due in over the weekend, with unsettled weather continuing into the first of next week.