As wildfires continued to tear through Southern California communities, having Salt Lake City ready for a catastrophic event isn’t lost on Mayor Erin Mendenhall.
The mayor said though the city is prepared with water and resources, the thought of a major fire still keeps her up at night.
“None of us would have guessed that in the month of January, all of Los Angeles would be consumed in fire,” Mendenhall told the Deseret News and KSL editorial boards Wednesday. “But fire is now a 365-day threat. I think what we’re seeing and what our firefighters are on the frontlines experiencing there is reshaping the way that we calculate our readiness for different disasters.”
A group of 64 firefighters from various Utah agencies have been on the ground in the Malibu area since last Friday working to prevent the devastating Palisades Fire from spreading.
Mendenhall said she feels “absolutely confident” in the Salt Lake City Fire Department’s training. She said the fire agencies in the valley assist each other and the city is in a strong position to coordinate with them.
“We have the best fire department in the country,” she said, adding the city has reservoirs in its control, including Little Dell in Parleys Canyon, that it can access for water.
“But I mean, as much as we can say, the resources, the training and the person capacity is there to fight whatever comes our way,” the mayor said.
Evaluating mass tragedies
Mendenhall said it’s not just fires the city must be prepared for.
“If any mayor knows this it’s me, in the state of Utah, that you don’t know what is coming next. And you don’t know how it’s going to land. Whether that’s a pandemic or an earthquake or an inland hurricane or 300 protest events in seven months. The horizon is broad, but we’re creative,” she said.
Mendenhall dealt with all of those unexpected events in her first term.
The city also dissects mass tragedies in other cities such as the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022. Salt Lake City police held a meeting for school administrators to talk about the lessons learned, current needs and resources as well as its availability to provide training and evaluate school doors and locks, she said.
“We are always learning from the tragedies that happen around the country and evaluating how we’ve thought about this potential,” Mendenhall said. “So we will do that (with the Southern California fires) absolutely. But right now, we still have over a dozen firefighters and engines out there fighting.”
