- Salt Lake County held its first Wildland Fire Town Hall on Thursday.
- Experts, including utility representatives, educated residents on wildfire preparedness and risks.
- Tara Behunin emphasized defensible space and community awareness amid increasing fire dangers.
SALT LAKE CITY — With fire danger only increasing in the weeks ahead, Unified Fire Authority firefighters and Salt Lake County emergency managers hosted their first-ever "Wildland Fire Town Hall" Thursday evening.
The event, hosted at Unified Fire's headquarters at 3380 S. 900 West, featured wildland fire experts and a host of others, including power and gas company representatives.
"This is the first wildfire town hall for Salt Lake County," said Salt Lake County emergency management director Tara Behunin. "Based off the risk — I mean we're way overdue for a valley fire, and we're just bringing awareness to the citizens, to the whole community. As we saw yesterday (Wednesday) with the Sandhurst 2 fire, right, it can happen at any time."
According to Behunin, the goal was to educate residents and help them be prepared for wildfire season.
"First and foremost is defensible space," Behunin said during an interview with KSL. "We note that often wildfires take over a home based on ember cast. It's not a wall of fire that comes upon a home. It is ember cast that takes over and hits debris that's up next to a home, and then it takes over the property."
Behunin said Rocky Mountain Power workers were present to explain public safety shut-offs and settings that could lead to more outages during high fire danger, and Enbridge workers were there to explain where gas lines are located and what homeowners can do in the event of a wildfire.
"We've got a great range of folks that are helping every citizen here feel empowered and educated to make their properties safe and help themselves," Behunin said.
Behunin explained just how dire fire conditions were.
"Salt Lake County emergency management and Unified Fire Authority are aware of our risks," Behunin said. "We did not get any snowfall this year. We're already in drought. That heightens our wildfire risk. We're seeing fires start earlier."
She hoped ultimately more education would help residents when it counts.
"By bringing all these partners together for the first time, we are showing our focus and our attention to the level of risk and our care for the community to be prepared and resilient," Behunin said.
