Residents in south-central Utah are being asked to reduce energy consumption as much as possible over the next few days, while crews seek to repair transmission lines affected by the Monroe Canyon Fire.
Garkane Energy Cooperative says it plans to shut its main transmission line beginning at about 6 a.m. on Wednesday, allowing crews to replace 12 power poles destroyed last week. At the same time, six generators will be turned on to power towns and areas that would otherwise be without power, aiming to reduce any significant power impacts, company officials said Tuesday.
The work is expected to last a few days and will be completed by Saturday morning. Residents near the fire in Sevier County, as well as communities in Wayne County, are being asked to limit energy usage at that time. Officials say the work could cause some additional outages or energy “blinks.”
“It’s a massive, complex operation, and we’ve never done anything like this before,” Garkane said.
The south-central Utah energy provider was forced to de-energize its system last week when the Monroe Canyon Fire threatened transmission lines in the area, leading to an outage that impacted thousands of residents. Twelve poles were destroyed shortly thereafter.
Garkane crews hauled in large generators to restore power to affected communities, a little more than 24 hours after the outage. Garkane Energy and Rocky Mountain Power also began working on initial repairs over the weekend.
Tuesday’s update comes as crews continue to make gains after the fire, which started on July 13, began burning erratically last week. Warm temperatures, strong wind gusts and low relative humidity helped the fire quintuple in size within a week after it had burned 10,244 acres by July 25.
Fire growth has slowed down so far this month, at least compared to the final few days of July. The fire has now burned 63,653 acres, federal firefighters reported on Tuesday, burning a little more than 8,000 acres since Friday.
Crews have been able to rebuild some of the lost containment in that time. Containment of the fire had reached 16% before it dropped to as low as 4% by the end of last week. It is now back up to 13% as fire growth slows. Officials lifted evacuations in the Burrville, Sevier County and Paiute Reservation recreational vehicle park areas on Monday because of the improvements.
However, crews continue to face harsh conditions. The National Weather Service issued a red flag warning for Tuesday because of the heat, low humidity and gusty winds. Similar conditions are forecast through at least Thursday.
Nearly 1,350 personnel remain assigned to the fire, seeking to bolster containment of the fire despite this week’s conditions.