Gov. Mike Leavitt and the State Board of Regents announced Friday that Utah's public college students fighting wildfires throughout the West need not worry about missing their classes, most of which begin next week.
To help battle the blazes, firefighter students in Utah will be allowed, on a case-by-case basis, to enroll late or receive a tuition refund without penalty, allowing firefighting agencies to retain people on the lines through the worst of the fire season.
"We are all in this together and are grateful to our student firefighters who are playing a critical role in fighting these devastating fires," Leavitt said in a statement.
And the situation across the West is likely to only get worse, said Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, speaking in West Yellowstone, Mont. With resources already stretched to the limit, he said, little can be done to slow the fires' progress.
More than 1 million acres are burning in the West, more land on fire at any one time in the United states since 1910. Officials are increasingly fearful that fires in Montana, the hardest-hit state, could turn catastrophic as separate blazes merge.
Montana and Idaho already have made accommodations for their students, recognizing their vital role in fighting the fires. Higher Education Commissioner Cecelia Foxley said, "With our students working to protect lives, property and the environment, we want to do everything we can to remove uncertainty about their education."
This is the first season the regents have made such a provision for student firefighters.
The governor's office estimates about 300 Utah student firefighters are scattered throughout the West. Most are in Idaho.
Many of Utah's firefighters were scrambling to extinguish more than a score of new blazes set by lightning strikes from thunderstorms that rolled through Utah Thursday and Friday.
In Wyoming near the Utah border, the Sheep Mountain fire was contained on Thursday, said Mike Brown, fire information officer with the BLM office in Rock Springs, Wyo. The fire, 30 miles southwest of Rock Springs, has been burning since Aug. 10.
"We have a secure line all around the fire," he said. The line is 90 miles long, and the burned area is estimated at 29,009 acres.
"This has been a real rip-snorter for us," he said.
Student firefighters should contact the registrar's office of their college or university as soon as possible to make appropriate arrangements.
Hugh Thompson, deputy director at the Division of Natural Resources, said the fire season generally ends between the middle and end of September.
Most of Utah's biggest wildfires were nearing containment on Friday, thanks to the thunderstorms. But the storms' lightning bolts ignited many new fires.
"We've had considerable thunderstorms over the state today," said Larry Burch, forecaster with the National Weather Service regional office in Salt Lake City.
The high temperature in Utah's capital was 92 degrees Friday, said Burch, which means that this summer's heat wave tied for the second-longest stretch of temperatures above 90, with 39 days. Hotter weather makes fires burn more savagely.
"They had 20 or 25 fire starts in Utah," said Ann Stanworth in the National Interagency Fire Center, Boise.
Apparently the worst of the new fires in the Utah vicinity is the Goose Creek fire, on the Utah-Idaho border. Barbara Knieling of the Eastern Great Basin Coordination Center in Salt Lake City said an estimate made at 1 p.m. Friday is that the fire is around 300 acres.
"At Richfield they had a 100-acre fire" in South Millard Canyon, she added.
Some of the new fires were detected late Thursday night or early Friday. Others may have been started with the Friday afternoon storms.
Knieling said firefighters are concerned because "it's supposed to be pretty windy" today. High winds can cause fires to spread rapidly.
The national center reported that three large fires remained burning in Utah:
The Swains fire, three miles east of Holden, Millard County, 7,900 acres on private property and land administered by the Bureau of Land Management, Fishlake National Forest and state government. The fire is 65 percent contained, officials calculate.
Rain, cloud cover and increased humidity over the past three days have greatly improved prospects for controlling the fire, said Linda L. Jackson, fire information officer for the Richfield Interagency Fire Center.
The carpet of conifer needles continues to smoulder where the rain did not penetrate, she said. The 340 firefighters on the scene are anxious to put out the hot spots "because if our weather changes . . . those things could just self-ignite."
Dry Fork II fire 20 miles northwest of Vernal: "It's still burning," said Diane Augustus, information assistant with Ashley National Forest. "It's 80 percent contained."
The recent rainfall was minimal, she said. Area scorched is 2,070 acres.
The main problem is that the terrain is so steep that fire engines and crews can't reach parts of the blaze. "They're still worrying about the pockets that are (burning) down in Black Canyon," she said.
Chournos fire on Promontory Peninsula, Box Elder County: the interagency center says this 4,050-acre fire is 95 percent contained, although the center adds, "No new information reported."
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Contributing: The New York Times and Douglas Palmer