Mending Milford: Ravaged by wildfire 1 year ago, area begins to recover
Rancher Mike Yardley views similar areas and can see a need, his own, unmet because federal range managers like Gates aren't letting his cattle anywhere near sensitive spots that are still being rehabilitated after the 2007 wildfires that ravaged this area.
"In the long run we'll be better off," Yardley admitted about waiting to graze in some spots.
Yardley and Gates are complimentary of each other, but they don't quite see eye to eye as massive rehabilitation and monitoring efforts continue here after last year's largest single wildfire in Utah history.
Marleen Hodges, who with her husband runs the Chevron station at the Cove Fort exit near the interstate, only has to look out a window at the burned hulks of trees about 50 yards from her gas pumps to be reminded of a "tornado" of fire that swept over her business one year ago.
"It was terrifying," Hodges said. The evacuation on a Friday night was so sudden that she yelled to a customer trying to fill up, "Hang it up and go!"
Two people died in a smoke-related accident on I-15. About $4 million was spent on fighting the raging blaze.
Inferno's aftermath
More than 270,000 acres that burned belong to the federal Bureau of Land Management. About 160,000 acres of BLM land have been reseeded as of last April and another 40,000 acres of state and private land are also being rehabilitated by reseeding efforts.
All total, the BLM has spent about $22 million on reviving land so precious to so many, like Yardley and Lisa Reid, who is raising a family in Fillmore.
Reid sees on flat surfaces inside her house evidence of what the Milford Flat fire left behind.
"You should see our homes," said Reid, a spokeswoman for the BLM. "Spring and summer have been terrible — the amount of dust that's been in the air. You wouldn't believe the accumulation of dust."
Worse, Reid said all of the dust blowing in the air has led to breathing problems for children in the neighborhood where she lives.
The exposed soil not yet held in place by regrowth in the Milford Flat area is a fine, chalky, light-brown dirt that, when the wind gets going, can quickly create a dust-bowl atmosphere. Last fall the Utah Highway Patrol closed sections of I-15 through Millard and Beaver counties because of blowing dust.
Recent comments
The largest single factor in the fire was cheat grass. Before the...
Kevin in Ogden | July 13, 2008 at 9:25 a.m.
