- Firefighters battle the Cottonwood Fire amid dangerous red flag warnings in Beaver.
- Over 650 firefighters face low humidity and 50-mph wind gusts cautiously.
BEAVER — Firefighters were battling the Cottonwood Fire with caution Friday as winds picked up in the middle of a particularly dangerous situation red flag warning.
The first-of-its-kind warning issued by the National Weather Service on Thursday and in effect through Saturday surrounded low humidity levels projected to bottom out at 8% and wind gusts expected to reach 50 miles per hour.
Alyssa Mason, Great Basin Team 5 spokeswoman, said the conditions weren't immediately changing the strategy for firefighters, who were continuing to build contingency lines and protect what they could as they attempted to slow or halt the progress of the massive fire that had already burned 71,841 acres.
However, Mason said over 650 firefighters assigned to the blaze were proceeding carefully.
"As firefighters, we have stories in our culture about wind shifts and weather changes that have killed entire crews on fires before, in even some of our recent history, and so that's always kind of in the back of our minds," Mason said. "It was kind of a solemn feeling at briefing this morning as they're talking about these weathers and they're talking about safety and they're talking about all these things that can go wrong today, and so it was a pretty sobering kind of morning for a lot of us."
Mason said firefighters received a warning as they headed out for the day.
"We always have safety first out there and as soon as we see things or we start getting feelings, we've told the guys (if) they don't like it, disengage, get to a safe place," Mason said.
The spokesperson said that with extremely low humidity and high winds, the flames can become extremely volatile.
"With winds of that speed, we'll get a surface fire that is going to move quickly, and you can see some pretty extreme spotting, where at the onset of this fire we saw spotting up to a mile ahead of the fire," Mason said. "If this thing stands up with those winds, we can see extreme spotting again. There's going to be heavy smoke. There's probably going to be ash falling on places like Richfield, and we're going to see just very quick flame movement across the landscape."
