MONROE, Sevier County — Trent Ingram quickly acknowledged that Mother Nature got the best of his team as firefighters, local authorities and state officials packed an auditorium Wednesday evening to discuss the latest impacts of a wildfire burning in central Utah.
“Today was humbling. ... We lost the battle today (but) haven’t lost the war yet,” said Ingram, commander of the Great Basin Complex Incident Management Team No. 5.
The Monroe Canyon Fire burned nearly 12,000 acres over the past 24 hours, Ingram’s team reported Thursday. It has scorched 48,363 acres since July 13, with most of the acreage burning over the last few days.
Swift winds, low relative humidity and warm temperatures — the three factors that go into a red flag warning — have all combined into conditions that have made the fire difficult to predict or battle. The conditions were so severe on Wednesday that multiple crews working to protect structures across multiple sections of the fire were “forced to retreat” because of how quickly the fire was spreading, which threatened firefighters’ safety, the report added.
A few “spot fires” jumped across fire lines crews had set up around the Manning Meadows and Bagley Ranch areas, but the lines held up despite the conditions, firefighters added.
Still, the sudden burst in fire activity resulted in new evacuations and a brief closure of state Route 24 in the area. Garkane Energy Cooperative, which supplies power to many residents in south-central Utah, reported that the fire burned some of its transmission structures. The provider was forced to de-energize some of its transmission lines earlier in the day.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many structures were burned or if any other structures were burned on Wednesday. The outage was still impacting thousands of customers Thursday morning.
The impacts on the community have been “tough” to watch, Ingram said. He said that crews put together a plan to attack the fire, but everything was thrown out the window when the conditions became too overwhelming.
“The last thing we want to do is evacuations, road closures (or de-energizing) power lines. I’m going to lose sleep over that,” he said. “We’ve got over 1,000 people on this fire — boots on the ground. We’re throwing everything at it ... and it’s just not stopping this thing.”
What’s worse, the National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for nearly all of central and southern Utah for Thursday. Meteorologists anticipate that red flag conditions will remain in the forecast into the weekend, creating more “critical” fire weather.
Great Basin Complex Incident Management officials say they will reenter some of the area they were forced to vacate on Wednesday, “where it is safe to do so.”
State leaders are closely monitoring the fire, which has become Utah’s largest wildfire in five years. It now accounts for over 40% of the 114,914 acres burned across the state this year.
“We’ve got your back, and we’re here for whatever it is you need,” said Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, who attended Wednesday’s meeting.
Firefighters at the meeting also urged people to respect closures as they continue to battle the fire. They added it’s too late for evacuated areas, but they say residents in areas prone to fire should create a defensible space outside of their homes now to help crews protect it in case a wildfire breaks out.