Utah’s 10 largest fires this year have already cost nearly $217M to battle

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah is in the midst of its worst fire season in nearly two decades, and it and the federal government are quickly running up a large tab to handle all of it.

Utah’s 10 largest wildfires so far this year, which account for the vast majority of the more than 537,000 acres that have burned this year, are estimated to cost nearly $217 million to battle, according to the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands. The state could be on the hook to pay for $37.9 million of that.

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However, acreage and costs are still “very fluid,” Jamie Barnes, the division’s director and state forester, cautioned members of the Utah Legislature’s Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Environmental Quality Appropriations Subcommittee on Tuesday.

“The cost on these are still changing. It will take us a good year to consolidate those costs overall on all these fires,” she said as she presented the data.

Since it’s fluid and the season is not over, it’s still unclear how much Utah pays for these costs. That, she added, will be determined as the final bill is pieced together.

Utah did receive assistance grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency on five of its largest fires, which reimburse up to 75% of the state’s firefighting costs. The state currently estimates it will receive $18.2 million from these grants, which would arrive sometime in the coming years.

The firefighting estimates don’t include some of the other costs associated with this year’s fires. The fires have destroyed 200 properties, 184 of which came from the Cottonwood Fire alone in Beaver County, Barnes said.

Flooding from the fire burn scar also created all sorts of damage in Beaver west of the fire, which is also not accounted for in the costs released on Tuesday. Costs from fire impacts in that area are likely in the hundreds of millions of dollars, she added.

“It was just unreal. … Fires and floods are not fun,” said Rep. Carl Albrecht, R-Richfield, about the damage in the area, adding that the flooding risks will continue for a few more years.

Eagle Point Ski Resort, which was among the properties that received damage, already determined that it won’t reopen this winter. A section of state Route 153 was also severely damaged by flooding.

Gov. Spencer Cox previously said the fire may set new state records in damage costs.

Post-fire rehabilitation costs aren’t included in the estimates, either, which are projects that seek to stabilize flood risks and get burnt land closer to what it was before a fire. Utah and the U.S. Forest Service struck a deal earlier this month to secure the initial $18.4 million toward the costs around the Cottonwood Fire site.

Utah has funding for cameras in remote areas that help detect new fires, which Barnes said will continue to be strategically added across the state.