Panel discusses Parley's Canyon Fire and future emergency preparation

Everyone agreed that the Summit County community was "lucky" with the containment of the Parley's Canyon Fire. Photo: Townlift

PARK CITY, Utah — On Thursday evening, a panel made up of officials from Park City, Summit County, and the state of Utah discussed lessons learned from the 541-acre Parley’s Canyon Fire in August that forced the evacuation of roughly 8,000 residents.

“This incident, in particular, was kind of the big one for us,” said Mike McComb, emergency program manager for Park City Municipal. He said that despite evacuations taking place in Summit County, the fire technically never left Salt Lake County.

Summit County Fire Warden Bryce Boyer gave a brief summary of the day the fire started. Boyer was in Wanship when he received the first report of the fire. Crews on the ground quickly relayed to him that the fire was going to need more than local resources. Once air units were dispatched, Boyer said he realized “we were going to have evacuations and a larger incident than just our typical show-up, put it out, go home and nobody knows it happened.” He said the risk was simply too high not to evacuate the Summit Park/Pinebrook area.

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The Park City Fire District was first on the scene. PCFD Chief Bob Zanetti described the scene: “the Battalion Chief looked at it and said, “this is the real deal.” We’re not going to try to be heroes here. We’re going to call our resources in and escalate this thing as fast as we can.”

A point consistently brought up was the frictionless collaboration between all agencies — city, county, and state. Summit County Sheriff Justin Martinez said this was especially useful for the monumental task of going door-to-door for evacuations. He said that despite roughly ten people deciding to stay in their homes, he estimated that 95-98% of residents evacuated. He emphasized that he only has the legal authority to remove someone from their property if they are under 18-years-old, as that constitutes as child neglect.

The conversation then turned to the future. Specifically how residents can prepare for such emergencies, but also what can be done to the local landscape to help mitigate these incidents.

Several references were made to the recent fuels reduction projects in Summit Park and on Treasure Hill. The purpose of these projects is to improve forest health, protect watershed resilience and mitigate hazardous fuels by patch-cutting, selectively thinning, and removing ladder fuels and brush.

Along with vegetation work, home hardening was also brought up. Because of the likely ember exposure to homes during a wildfire, you must consider your homes’ building material and design.