Fire Narrative

Hellfire Summer Lee Enterprises President’s Award Entry 2012 Daily Herald, Provo, Utah

Fires always make newsrooms scramble. How about six fires? When you have multiple wildfires burning back-to-back, at times simultaneously — forcing evacuations of whole communities, destroying structures and in one case bringing death — the word scramble takes on a whole new meaning.

Between June 22 and the end of August, the Daily Herald experienced genuine hellfire, some of it human-caused, some caused by lightning strikes. This colossal series of flaming disasters stretched our meager resources to the limit. But while stretching we pulled together. The quality of our effort is summed up in a Tweet from a reader speaking about reporter Jim Dalrymple (@jimmycdii), who worked virtually around the clock for days on end:

“If you want #dumpfire news 2 hrs after @jimmycdii tweeted about it, follow any UT news organization.”

The sentiment was widespread on our Twitter feeds. We heard similar compliments from readers in Salt Lake County, which is ordinarily dominated by larger news organizations.

Complicating our coverage effort were the sheer distances on three of the fires.

Utah communities are often spread out dozens of miles from one another. In the case of our Sanpete County coverage area — which experienced one death by fire as well as ferocious destruction of property and the charring of 48,000 acres — the mileage is daunting. Several Sanpete communities directly in the path of the Wood Hollow Fire lie 80-100 miles from the Herald’s base. Four of them were evacuated — Fairview, Mt. Pleasant, Fountain Green and Birdseye.

The distances made mobile reporting (initially via smartphones and remote photo transmission) crucial. In addition, our online team quickly deployed Scribble Live to pull live updates — often minute-by-minute — from readers and reporters in the

field. User-contributed material played a vital role in keeping the Daily Herald first out of the blocks vs. our competitors.

All live updates appeared on our homepage, on iPad, mobile and in frames embedded within stories. More than 50 different readers sent photos and videos, giving the state a look at the fires from as many different vantage points as possible. We also created a central page for readers to find information.

Not all was far afield. Three of the fires occurred in our backyard, threatening established communities in Utah Valley. Two of these are still active as we write.

Mother Nature apparently felt people had not suffered enough and sought another pound of flesh in some areas. A second fire swept toward Eagle Mountain in early August. And now, with heavy rains, we have seen the first major mudslides in that city, bringing further property damage and grief for families as a result of the lack of ground cover, which was lost in the combined blazes.

Through all this, we produced an outstanding print product. The strains on the copy desk were significant, with ongoing late updates and changes as developments came in. Some examples are included in this entry in an online slide show.

The Herald photo staff was nothing short of heroic in providing core coverage, including numerous videos from staffer Richard Teasdale, whose interviews touched not only on the human effects of the devastation but the effects on animals.

Our photo galleries were second to none in Utah.

Photographers found ways to cooperate with emergency crews (and sometimes to steer around them) to provide stunning pictorial coverage. They learned what it’s like to be told “no� again and again by fire officials and law enforcement and still find a way to deliver. They were persistent, talking their way into better access, moving fast to gain it before areas were closed off, and driving many miles to get a better angle.

(Photographer Spenser Heaps detailed some of his experience in a note to Photo Editor Mark Johnston. Those comments are included as supplement following this narrative.)

As the fires progressed, state and federal emergency resources poured in. The Herald covered all of that as well, with information about evacuation centers and the latest communications to help affected families.

Chronology • Our baptism by fire began June 22 with the Dump Fire, which threatened two cities in our core coverage area — Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs. (The mayor of Saratoga Springs is Mia Love, notable for her prominent speech at the Republican National Convention as a black Republican woman.) Wind sent a wall of flame rolling toward these bedroom communities as authorities ordered everyone to get out. We were first to report that the cause of this fire was target shooters, and that they had contacted authorities when they realized what they had done. When it was all over, more than 5,500 acres had been gobbled up.

• While the Dump Fire yet burned, sparking power lines (the result of stolen copper wire) started the Wood Hollow Fire 80 miles to the southeast in Sanpete County.

We scrambled to cover, beginning June 24. The Herald produces the weekly Pyramid for a number of communities in Sanpete County. Several of those communities as well as county subdivisions were evacuated. More than 50 structures were destroyed, and one man died in the blaze. When it was finally contained, the Wood Hollow Fire had consumed nearly 48,000 acres.

• As if things weren’t bad enough, construction equipment apparently started the Quail Fire on July 3 in the in the hills immediately adjacent to the wealthy community of Alpine, in northern Utah County. North County reporter Caleb Warnock was on it immediately when smoke showed, supplemented by other reporters and correspondents in the area. We were reminded of the advantages of having reporters working and living in the communities they cover. Caleb poured updates to the Web as they happened, from Twitter developments to press conferences. The first night, July 3, we worked well into the night updating the story. The next morning, the Fourth of July holiday, Paige Fieldsted was on the scene early. She and city editor Heidi Toth worked all that holiday updating.

Because fire officials update constantly online and through Twitter, we were able to get information to readers online very early in the morning. We were the first to report that the fire was 90 percent contained (early on a Saturday morning). Result: 2,222 acres torched. This blaze is still active.

• A second wave of flame attacked Eagle Mountain on Aug. 7 — dubbed the Pinyon Fire. It swept across part of Camp Williams, a local military base. Again, we mobilized the North County staff and correspondents, led this time by Cathy Allred. She was quickly on scene with evacuated families. Photographer James

Roh was injured when he stepped on a nail at the military’s mock Afghan village that had been consumed in the blaze. The Pinyon fire added another 6,000 acres of destruction.

• On Aug. 21, we learned of — and were first to report — a new fire (cause unknown) in rugged Diamond Fork Canyon, a popular nearby recreation area with numerous cabins and campgrounds. The Red Ledges Fire destroyed an estimated 2,400 acres, thanks again to Mother Nature’s high winds. It flashed to triple its original size in less than a day and forced the evacuation or 20 cabins and several campgrounds. Again, our photographers scrambled to provide outstanding visual coverage.

• We owned the Rock Canyon Fire, and left our competitors in the dust. It broke out in Provo, near a neighborhood above Brigham Young University campus on Aug. 29. The cause: fireworks again. Because this was mere blocks from the Daily Herald, metro editor Amie Bullard was able to get cell phone photos up on our website within minutes of the first smoke plume — another example of people helping in all aspects of news gathering. We were also the first to report the cause because of alert, heads-up work by South County reporter Candi Higley, who doesn’t even live in Provo. Candi saw a Facebook post by a friend who had witnessed the fleeing kids in the area and immediately e-mailed her friend’s cell phone number to an editor at the Herald. Because of this, we published our report on the cause hours before law enforcement could confirm it. This was a relatively small fire, but one with huge risk. The fear was palpable. Ten years ago, the same foothills had gone up in flames, destroying homes and blackening thousands of acres adjacent to Utah Valley communities.

Supplemental note from photographer Spenser Heaps The day the Wood Hollow fire kicked up was a Sunday. About to head out for a hike, I got a call from executive editor Randy Wright, who said Sanpete County communities were being evacuated and requested that I drive the down there on what would have been my day off to take photos.

I grabbed my gear and hit the road. The main highway leading to the area was closed due to smoke, so I had to take a long, circuitous route around a mountain to approach the fire. Eighty miles later I was near the town of Fairview, a few miles south of the blaze.

Previous fires I had covered happened near population centers in Utah County, meaning the few roads that got you close to the action were easily shut down by authorities. Sanpete County, however, is a sprawling rural landscape criss-crossed by dirt roads too numerous for the police to monitor and cut off. Looking at the location of the smoke plume and viewing Google Maps on my iPhone, I chose a dirt road that wound north toward the blaze. At the closed gate of a cattle ranch, I found myself less than a half-mile from towering flames. By the end of the day I had driven over two hundred miles and transmitted my work from my laptop and wireless card at a staging ground for wildfire fighters.

When the Dump Fire grew dramatically overnight, communities in Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain began evacuations. Arriving on-scene at a neighborhood being evacuated, I found my access cut off by the authorities. Roads going in were closed as cars streamed out.

I tried to get a ride from a police sergeant to photograph them going door-to-door to issue evacuation notices, but as more media arrived he said no. Walking back toward my car, I could see up a dirt path to homes where the owners were scurrying around to gather belongings. I approached one family as they loaded their SUV and their trailered boat with their belongings and was invited inside to get a few photos as they packed. I walked around the neighborhood getting a few more photos before retreating out of the evacuation area to my car.

After photographing some generic smoke plume photos and meeting up with our other photographers to touch base, I headed to Eagle Mountain. I wanted to check on an animal sanctuary I had photographed on several occasions and make sure they were OK. They had a dozen volunteers and several trailers on-hand, ready to transport the animals out of the area. A pair of emu made an interesting juxtaposition to the smoke in the background.

The Quail Fire grew faster than any other I had witnessed. As Alpine and Cedar Hills were being evacuated, I walked into a neighborhood of nice homes at the base of the burning hillside. After receiving a stern “no� from one family, I found another household that let me hang out as they packed their belongings. They had been issued evacuation orders but were waiting it out until the last minute.

One of my favorite photos came as they helped their neighbor load her two alpacas into a pickup truck to take them out of the area. Afterward, shooting from their yard with a 400mm lens, I saw a state fire marshall approach. I expected to be ordered out of the area, by he stood by me and took photos with his own camera.

He explained to me how the firefighting aircraft operate, with a spotter plane that leads in the large tankers to deliver a targeted drop.

I had a prime vantage point as the large aircraft circled in for several drops, yielding excellent up-close photos of the plane dropping its load of blood-red fire retardant.