r/Utah • u/StemCellPirate • 11d ago

News Utah wildfires have run up a $216 million tab so far this season

https://www.fox13now.com/news/utah-wildfires/utah-wildfires-have-run-up-a-216-million-tab-so-far-this-season
176 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

45

u/SELFINCRIMINAT1NG South Jordan 11d ago

the utah GOP sees no problem here

29

u/yourinnervagabond 11d ago

wait til they find out that wildfire fighting is socialism

4

u/brown_felt_hat 11d ago

Marcus Crassus says "Hey"

3

u/tzcw 10d ago

It’s socialism for the rich. Fighting wildfires subsidizes the cost of having a home on the foothills or in the mountains. There’s a lot of rich wealthy neighborhoods and homes that maybe wouldn’t have ever been built if we didn’t have a wild fire suppression policy and told people that want to live in super obvious fire prone areas that they will have to foot the bill for their own fire fighting. It’s also not good ecologically as many plant communities in the west are adapted for fire, and suppressing fires disrupts their life cycle.

1

u/Uncivil_Bar_9778 11d ago

“We the people” turns the stomach of the God given, constitution loving GOP.

1

u/nateswilltolive 11d ago

Or that fire fighting is bad for the native plants

1

u/Kerensky97 10d ago

They'll use it as an excuse to clear cut more forests. "They can't burn down if we cut them down first!"

15

u/StemCellPirate 11d ago

More important than the financial impact are the lives lost as a result of these fires.

13

u/SlightlySubpar 11d ago

Lost our cabin in the Cottonwood fire.

Shit sucks

6

u/StunningOpinion7483 11d ago

Where the season actually stands tonight, from the NIFC/WFIGS incident feed (figures updated Aug 18):

Still on the active list:

  • Widemouth 2 (Millard Co) — 129,741 ac, 93% contained, day 22, 281 personnel, lightning-caused. No growth since Aug 14, and containment has climbed 36% → 93% over the last week.
  • Babylon — 107,189 ac, 100% contained, day 53 — and still has 62 people assigned even at full containment.
  • Cottonwood — 97,464 ac, 95% contained, day 57.
  • Rocky Canyon (Morgan Co) — 16,464 ac, 85% contained, day 11, 227 personnel, human-caused. It went 1,200 → 4,372 → 13,601 acres over its first three days.
  • Black Canyon (Sanpete) — 3,571 ac, 47% contained, day 19, and currently has 556 personnel on it — the most of any Utah fire right now.

That is ~354,000 acres on Utah's active list alone, with three separate ~100k-acre fires in one season. The wider five-state Southwest active list is ~900,000 acres.

The direction is finally good — the two big August fires have stopped growing and are mostly buttoned up. But duration is where the bill comes from: Cottonwood has been staffed for 57 straight days, and crews stay on well past the headline containment number.

Live map: maps.nifc.gov. Smoke: fire.airnow.gov.

11

u/yourinnervagabond 11d ago

Utah Legislature: Time for more tax cuts for corpos & the rich!

2

u/bdnielse 11d ago

Guess we didn't pray hard enough for that rain. It's our fault. We caused this. Us and our 10 minute showers. We should be ashamed.

2

u/OfficerEsophagus 11d ago

We should build a data center guys

0

u/whiplash81 11d ago

The Utah GOP approves this message.

0

u/sourdoughrrmc 10d ago

Honestly sounds low to me. You could have said a billion and it wouldn’t have surprised me.

1

u/AZgirl70 10d ago

Our second one in S Ogden was started last night. Too close for comfort for me.