Local firefighters are helping battle out-of-state blaze as smoke drifts into Utah

SALT LAKE CITY — Much of the awful haze polluting the air across Utah lately is coming from massive wildfires burning in Oregon and California. Right now a small team of Utah firefighters are answering those states’ calls for help, adding extra manpower to stop the fires and smoke.

Five firefighters from the Unified Fire Authority Wildland Division in Riverton are working outside Sonora, California. They’re helping fill the holes left by local crews diverted to handle one of the more than a dozen active wildfires burning across the state, like the Park Fire, now California’s fourth-largest wildfire in history.

For nearly five weeks the Utah crew has been on standby in the Stanislaus National Forest, watching for new wildfires the U.S. Forest Service doesn’t have the manpower to respond to.

“They basically are on patrol for the Forest Service in that area for any lightning strikes, initial attacks, things like that,” said Paul Story, wildland captain with Unified Fire Authority.

Firefighters said part of the reason the Utah crew is so small is because of our own fire threat here at home. Although the thick haze from Oregon and California is spreading throughout the western U.S., they said Utah’s fire threat is also so high many of our firefighters are needed here, so our local resources aren’t depleted in case a similar wildfire breaks out in Utah.

Fortunately for the Utah crews in California they’re scheduled to come home Saturday, but another five-man crew from Unified Fire Authority is going out to take their place.