By Jesse Gunther

In his eight years fighting fires, 2008 is the first year that Fillmore Fire Department's Lincoln Dzurik remembers not fighting a fire until June. As an employee of the only non-volunteer fire department in the region, Dzurik keeps busy responding to an average of 60 fires per season. In a busy season it is a lucrative business for a young man in his mid twenties, and Dzurik likes the work.

Experts say this year's late fire season was caused by major fires in 2006 and 2007 which have left Central Utah with less fuel to burn. They predict this season will be quieter with fewer, less-intense fires.

While he knows the evidence may indicate a light season, Dzurik remembers last year's Milford Flat Fire, Utah's largest fire on record. He knows plenty of fuel remains, and he has to be prepared for anything.

The Milford Flat Fire started as a routine brush fire and over the course of nine days devastated 363,052 acres of landscape, 648 times the size of BYU campus. It led to the deaths of two people, nearly destroyed the livelihoods of dozens of ranchers, wiped out wildlife and vegetation and shattered residents' sense of security.

Though fires come every year and the hearty local populations have grown accustomed to them, the Milford Flat Fire left a lasting imprint on the land and the people.

"We've had a lot of big fires in Milford County," said Scott Cory, a local volunteer fire chief, sergeant in the county sheriff's office and Kanosh city councilman. "This fire scared a lot of people."

Those that witnessed its beginnings - a stray bolt of lightening in a dry field - thought it would cause little more than a standard brush fire. The police officer who confirmed the fire guessed it was no more than a 100-acre fire and would require only one fire truck to put it out.

As some of the area's only seasoned professionals, Dzuirk and his two-man crew were the first firefighters to receive a call about the Milford Flat Fire. Dzurik immediately grabbed his gear before he and fellow firefighters Bryce Monroe and Kyle Beckstrand headed toward the fire.

Seven years of drought was apparent in Milford's front yards and fields. But, drought or no drought, it was impractical to water lawns here, and this was no place for Kentucky bluegrass. With average temperatures in the triple digits and limited rainfall, it is difficult to make anything grow.

Town residents, like their pioneer founders, adapt to their habitat by filling front yards with decorative gravel and woodchips. In the outskirts of towns sit one-story farm homes between acres of gently nurtured crops. Their accompanying silos have contentedly sunk into the ground with age as permanent fixtures seasoned from and for hardship.

Dzurik passed vast crops as he and his crew drove south on I-15. Their three-man truck carried a 350-gallon tank that could last them a couple of hours.

As they drove, Dzurik calculated that if the size of the fire the police officer estimated was correct, it would take the team about 4 hours to put it out. They would be finished by 9 p.m. That would give him enough time for a good dinner and a good night's rest.

When they neared Milford flat at 5 p.m., they could easily see the column of thick, black smoke three miles north of the town. Monroe navigated the dirt roads until they saw it.

It was exactly what Dzruik had expected: it looked like the 10-foot flames had covered about 100 acres and were using cheat grass and sagebrush as fuel.

There was nothing special about this fire, he thought; they would definitely be done in a few hours.

Two hours earlier a thunderstorm had passed through Milford. However, because of high temperatures, the rain droplets evaporated leaving only bolts of lighting, which ignited the dry cheat grass, and 45-mph winds fanned the fire.

The Milford flat was blanketed with cheat grass, which thrived from the previous soggy spring and whose length and low moisture content make it the perfect fuel for fires. Once the fire ignited a small hill, the high winds pushed the fire, like water, until it grew to 100 acres.

With Monroe driving the engine, Lincoln worked the hose, and Beckstrand smothered embers with a small hand tool. When they were joined by three other trucks from Cedar City and Milford, they decided that, instead of watering down the whole fire they would isolate it and let it run out of fuel.

Dzurik had put out dozens of other fires this way. At 9 p.m., when they were still working to contain it, a helicopter flew overhead on its way to another fire in southern Utah.

"What do you think the acreage of your fire is," the pilot asked.

They all agreed on the ground that it was no more than 400 acres.

"The fire is at least 4,000 acres," the pilot said.

It couldn't be that big, Dzurik thought. But this was an illusive fire, and in the coming days he would learn that it was anything but predictable.

Dzurik, Monroe, Beckstrand and their new companions assumed they were working on the leading head of the fire, but they only had the tail end.

They had to reassess their strategy and realized they didn't have nearly enough people to fight a fire of that size.

They now knew the fire was deceptively large. Wind conditions and topography had indicated to the firefighters that the southern tip would be fiercest portion of the fire. But, as they toiled to keep it under control, the northern head had slowly crept toward a ridge of hills.

Once near them, the yellow tips of the flames preheated the hillside, and the fire rushed up the hill so quickly it looked as if the hill had combusted spontaneously. Once in the hills it absorbed the 8-foot juniper trees in minutes. The intense flames lost uphill momentum when they reached the top of the slope. Grasping hold of patches of cheat grass, the fire skipped down the slope in a stepping-stone-like pattern. Eventually it hit the uphill sections again, racing at speeds of 60 mph.

Monroe, the Fillmore engine's driver, knew a fire this big was unpredictable. It was spreading faster than he had ever seen a fire spread. He knew if it went west it would jump Highway 257, it would hit Milford and there would be no stopping it once it hit the western mountains. The tall, thin firefighter had been in Fillmore for eight years and, like Dzurik, liked the work and the pay. He was used to fighting fires and had put out several bad ones the year before but knew how quickly something could get out of hand.

They needed more men. At midnight, three hours after the pilot's acreage estimate, they learned that the fire had grown to 28,900 acres.

They worked through the night containing the southern edge of the fire and preventing it from spreading past Highway 257. Eventually 10 other engines and 30 more firefighters joined them.

The firefighters remained on the southern end of the fire for the next three days. They would prevent it from crossing 257, covering the mountains and spreading to Nevada.

They won the battle on the southern front, but the northern end of the fire raged onward, and the battle for Cove Fort and Kanosh was about to begin.

Copyright Brigham Young University 29 Jun 2008