SUMMIT COUNTY, Utah — As of Monday, the Yellow Lake Fire in the Uintas measured over 31,000 acres with more than 800 personnel on the ground battling the blaze.
"Some of the most gorgeous area in the United States and so obviously it hurts all of us to see it being consumed by fire," said public information officer Jeff Armstrong.
Fire officials claim the record-high temperatures, high winds, and dry conditions continue to encourage the growth of this fire.
People travel from all over to recreate in the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest.
"How we come to the forest and leave the forest will be very, very important for us," explained Daniel Jauregui, agency administrator for the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest.
Officials say their phones have been ringing off the hook.
“I field phone calls all day long with folks that just want to get up there to recreate hunt, fish, hike,” said Armstrong.
Back on Sept. 28, first responders began fighting the wildfire.
“This one will be a duration fire and we’re waiting for a season-ending event so rain or snow really,” said Brian Trick, a forest fire ecologist with the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest.
The unseasonably dry and hot weather along with high winds has made this fire burn hotter than normal. But there's another factor you may not have considered.
“With the bark beetles in general, it was an event that occurred a long time ago, it’s a lagging effect that we see and we have standing dead and we have trees that have fallen on the ground,” said Jauregui.
The bark beetle infestation is creating more dead, dry trees, especially in portions of the Uintas.
“Dealing with a larger infestation the normal for a decade to almost two decades," said Trick. "It’s been on our radar and as far as monitoring for that long one thing that is that has contributed to really to such a large explosion really of these dead and down."
The infestation, also known as beetle kill, has impacted the firefight in more ways than one.
“Dead trees out in this portion of the forest, some of them still standing, and when the fire gets into those dead trees. It moves, we haven’t seen any significant runs but the fire is going to continue to move through those dead trees and that crafted a tactical challenge for us because we can’t put firefighters in there under dead trees that are burning,” said Armstrong.
The high winds also lead to more favorable conditions for bark beetle production.
"We’ve seen that this insect which is airborne has actually been able to have multiple hatches a year used to be very limited but now we’ve seen that they’ll actually hatch multiple times a year,” added Trick.
While the temperatures and wind have fanned the flames, those same winds over the last several decades have been favorable for beetle generations.
"We got wind changing on this side of the southwest side of the north and south, it starts to push that fire around a lot and what happens with that is you sometimes don’t get the opportunity to catch it," Jauregui explained, "and so we’re chasing it the whole time and sometimes like this, when they get to this size, there’s really not much we can do.
"It has to be a seasoning event, a significant amount of snow that finally put these fires to bed."
