SUMMIT COUNTY, Utah — Summit County is set to launch a new firefighting program to help protect local areas as the federal system continues to be overextended with larger and larger fires.
It's called the Summit County Wildland Fire Unit, and it wouldn’t want to be thought of as a normal fire department.
Instead, it's group of volunteers who can augment staffing elsewhere should the need arise if a larger fires grows/
“Where we are nationally with the resources available with the amount of fires occurring that are going larger, it has over the last couple of years taxed resource availability,” said Bryce Boyer with Summit County Fire. “Any kind of fire that goes a longer duration is what we're looking at this team for.”
The team, which falls under the county's emergency management agency, is being started from scratch, so that means recruiting members is underway, along with finding new gear, equipment, and funding. However, the county is on board and will be taking care of the cost of the unit.
Since the team will be volunteer-based, it will only called in when needed. So far, seven firefighters that are Red Card certified have already signed up.
“We started reaching out to folks that I've worked with for a number of years.” Boyer said.
This means the team has already completed the required training to do the job, and Boyer says dozens of others are also ready to be trained and will be set to go this fall, with up to 30 people on the squad next year.
The big reason for this team's creation is because of the ongoing wildfire problem across the country.
According to the National Interagency Fire Center, there have been 40,775 incidents this year, burning over 5.8 million acres. On Wednesday alone there were 11,992 fire crews working the frontlines of wildfires across the country, all of that adding up to resources being spread thin.
“Building our capacity locally is a huge benefit because you don't know how long it's going to take to get those resources in or if they're even going to be available.” said Boyer. “Ultimately, I would hope that this grows to the point where we have enough members and appropriate equipment that they could be sent out to neighboring counties statewide and even nationally.”
It's an idea that’s already catching on with Boyer saying a number of other counties are now looking at this as a possibility for their communities.
Anyone interested in volunteering for the unit should email Boyer at bryceboyer@utah.gov.
