Photo Courtesy of Price City Fire Department
On Thursday afternoon at approximately 4:20 the Price City Fire Department along with other local, state and federal agencies responded to a fire by the fairgrounds in Price. 40-50 mile-per-hour winds fanned the blaze that started after a trio of men built an improperly attended campfire.
“The winds when I got there, as the first firefighter were at 20 miles-per-hour, and at that point we could have taken care of it and I was hoping that we would and they went from 20 to 30 to 40 and at the very worst they went to 50 miles an hour”, Price City Fire Chief Fitzgerald Petersen said.
And by the time it was contained, the fire had burned 50 acres and damage to a facility on fairgrounds road plus two fire trucks were threatened. Crews from Price, Helper and Wellington as well as state forestry and the BLM. To deal with traffic there were units from the Carbon County Sheriff, Price City Police and the Utah Highway Patrol.
Even with the extra patrols in place it didn’t stop citizens from trying to get a closer look, which is not only a hindrance to first responders but also illegal.”What happens when there is something like that going on, is you want to keep your focus on the work that could hurt you or your co-workers and then eventually a home owner, but what you end up doing is looking over your shoulder to take accountability for people that are hindering operations, which is not only a chargeable offense but in reality it changes your ability to do your job”, Petersen stated.
Three men took responsibility for the out of control blaze and charges are pending.
Chief Petersen went on to add, “We are in drought conditions, this is April, this is something that could be predicted for August and we have a long season ahead of us, the fuels are very dry and our ability to get to them would have been just fine if it had not been for the wind, we can’t predict the wind, we do have extreme drought conditions, you put that together with bad judgement and things that they will never be able to fully apologize for, and then we have a situation that put people at risks.”