To sum up 2018: it was a both a good and bad year for fires.
Sweetwater County Fire Warden Mike Bournazian gave the Sweetwater County Commissioners an update on the 2018 fire season, but he wasn’t going to give out any predictions on what 2019 would bring.
“What 2019 will hold, I do not know,” Bournazian said. “I never predict what next year’s going to be.”
However he does know that things can’t continue the way they are now.
“We can’t stretch our folks to the level we did,” he said.
Bournazian is referring to the 107 calls Sweetwater County fire responded to last year. Even though that’s about the same number of calls from the previous year, the types of calls have changed.
Up until about four years ago, the county wasn’t able to track this information as well as it can now. Bournazian said a new emergency reporting state program has allowed him to track calls better.
In 2018, 70 calls or roughly 65 percent of the calls were fire calls, while only nine were false alarm calls and 19 were good intent/cancelled calls, while in 2017 there were 13 false alarm calls and 26 good intent/cancelled calls.
Of the fire calls, Sweetwater County Fire responded to 57 wildland, three structure, six vehicle and four miscellaneous fires. In 2017, they responded to a total of 54 fire calls.
While nationally wildland fires have become something firefighters battle year round, the same isn’t true in Sweetwater County.
The winter season usually take care of what remained of the wildland fires.
“Last year, I’ll be honest we were tired,” Bournazian said. “Some were exhausted.”
Bournazian said they were so busy fighting fires, that they couldn’t even respond to four fire calls that came in. He had no one left to send.
He said fire season for them started in February and didn’t end until November. It was a long, tough season. One of the biggest Sweetwater County fires the firefighters responded to was the Laney Rim Fire, which was 13,000 acres.
Most of it was on Bureau of Land Management land, but 160 was private. Estimates on how much it cost to put out that fire are still being calculated, but a rough estimate is $1.3 million, he said.
“That’s the largest wildland fire since I’ve been here,” Bournazian said.
The second largest wildland fire in the county was the Black Butte Fire, which was fought by Sweetwater County Fire District No. 1.
They also helped out with the Roosevelt fire in Sublette County, which was 61,500 acres that claimed homes and injured people. When the firefighters aren’t busy with fires, they are training or working to reduce potential fire hazards within the county. They also work closely with other fire departments to come up with county-wide firefighting solutions.
Other business
The Sweetwater County Commissioners declared the Rock Springs Daily Rocket-Miner as is official newspaper for 2019. The Commissioners discussed how at last year’s meeting they publicly stated they were going to support both newspapers by changing the designation between the Green River Star and the Rocket-Miner from year to year. This year, was the Rocket-Miner’s turn.
Commission Roy Lloyd asked if the designation had to go to a newspaper or could an online publication work.
Deputy county attorney John Deleon said state statute specifies that it be “the newspaper designated by the commission.” Lloyd asked if newspaper was defined in the statute and Deleon said it’s defined as a print newspaper.
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