By Jesse Gunther

Three days after it had started, the Milford Flat Fire had spanned 160,000 acres and showed no signs of stopping. It was a big fire, but it wasn't until the third evening on July 8, 2007, when it reached 283,000 acres, that it was declared to be the largest fire in Utah history.

It started three days before on Friday when stray lightning hit the Milford Flat and 45 mph winds carried it through rolling hills. Unbeknownst to those working on it, the illusive fire had slowly crept north until it hit more rolling hills and burst overland at 60 to 70 mph.

Now, three days later, Millard Fire Warden Howard Allred realized this was no ordinary brushfire and desperately called for local, federal and volunteer firefighters. He knew he needed as many people as he could gather. With two deaths the day before and the largest road closure in the history of I-15, the fire had grown dangerously out of control, and he had few resources to fight it.

Earlier that day, several volunteer firefighters had returned severely dehydrated from fighting the fire. They had been working to put out an edge of the fire in a small ridge.

Their white shirts were now covered in black soot; they had had no drinking water, no protective gear and no way of communicating. If winds shifted, that small edge of the fire could have become a leading head, and they would have been trapped. There clearly weren't nearly enough resources for the number of people they would need to fight this fire.

Allred had spent a good portion of his days on the phone trying to get more equipment from the Bureau of Land Management. He grew frustrated by the response and all of the red tape associated with getting resources.

In managing fires, he thought that safety was key, and he refused to put his firefighters in danger. But, with a fire this big and resources stretched, he couldn't possibly create a plausible fire containment strategy without someone being put in danger.

He needed to cover the dangerous edges of the fire. But he knew he didn't have nearly enough men to do so safely, and he couldn't ask them to endanger their lives anymore than they already had. He needed more people, more trucks and more water tankers. He frantically called the BLM countless more times and demanded more resources.

But the Milford Flat Fire was just one of six fires burning in Utah. The 6,000 acre Black Rock Gulch fire was threatening homes on Utah's southern border, and the Neola North fire had already killed three people and was approaching Salt Lake City.

Allred knew that the fire in Milford dwarfed those in size but still found himself competing with them for resources. Federal resources also were being devoured by nine fires in Nevada, four in California and three in Oregon.

If Allred was going to get resources he would have to show that he needed them, and that meant he had to prove the region was in severe danger. The fire would soon give them the proof they needed.

Saturday, when reports reached Washington, D.C., detailing two motorists' deaths and the fire's size and erratic nature, federal fire officials finally increased the priority of the fire, elevating it from a Type II to a Type I.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency also pledged to cover 75 percent of the total cost. Federal Managers would send a Type I team to manage the fire. Allred knew that a Type I team - the Navy Seals of the firefighting community - would bring expertise, money and power to get the equipment he needed. He wouldn't be disappointed once they started showing up.

Rowdy Muir stepped out of his truck that Saturday afternoon into Kanosh's baseball diamond. Until they put out the fire, this would be his incident command post. Within hours it would be covered with 250 brightly-colored tents, rows of portable showers and bathrooms as well as a catering station manned by 30 cooks.

His tent would be filled with cell-phone stations, computers and fax machines. He had been an incident commander at too many fires to count and knew communication was the most important thing.

Everyone who worked with Muir loved him. He was every bit a hero from his flat brim baseball cap to his pointy-toed cowboy boots. He had a lot of experience fighting big fires and liked to tell stories about working with his crew on unpredictable wildfires in Alaska. He even collected T-shirts from federal "hotshot" teams as a tribute to their sacrifices and losses.

As the new incident commander and Type I leader, Muir was in charge of creating a fire containment strategy, communicating it effectively and then getting his people whatever they needed.

He had assistants whose primary job was to make sure every firefighter was properly equipped. It was so important to him that, when he saw a young firefighter running around in sneakers, without thinking, he handed his personal credit card to an assistant.

"See that woman? Get her whatever she needs."

Muir would take over official control the next morning at 6 a.m. and had until then to learn everything he could about the fire, build a strategy and get needed resources.

He immediately began requesting 20-person "hotshot" teams from across the nation. He would need more dozers, more helicopters and a lot more people.

He had a $12 million budget, but he told the BLM that he would get it done in $5 million. Firefighting was an increasingly expensive venture. The BLM had already spent $105 million of its $249 million annual budget, and it was only the beginning of the season. He thought, even with the unpredictable nature of the fire, he could stay below budget.

"We've got a tiger on our hands," Muir told his assistants as he looked at the fire's erratic movements.

The wind had slowed on Sunday but the fire had gotten into fields of cheat grass and had spread 123,000 acres that day. High temperatures, fast winds, low humidity and the possibility of dry lightning thunderstorms created the perfect weather conditions for fire.

But the real problem fighting this fire had been a lack of resources. They simply did not have the manpower to control the edges of the fire. Muir had the power to fix that and spent the night arranging for teams to be flown in.

By the time the fire reached 300,000 acres Monday morning, July 16, firefighters were ready for it. The crews Muir ordered were slowly arriving and were dispatched to edges of the fire they thought would spread.

Muir began his morning with 200 firefighters and ended the day with more than 300. They came from as far as Virginia and Alaska and were chosen for their availability and experience with fires. These crews had been fighting wildfires around the nation for years and had dealt with everything.

He staggered them in leading points of the fire to ensure all bases were covered, no matter where the wind moved. Other extra personnel were placed along I-15 which had now reopened. The fire would not jump the freeway again.

Over the next few days, pilots flying two huge air tankers saturated the fire with thousands of gallons of fire retardant. Nine bulldozers widened out existing roads to ensure that the fire would not jump them. Thirty engines surrounded the fire as 500 firefighters threshed embers and doused antagonistic flames.

The fire lashed out several times, but now Muir and his team had the resources to deal with almost anything.

With those resources, the fire was completely contained by the next Sunday. Rowdy Muir had completed the job he came to do. Rumors circulated as to whether he had fallen below his estimated budget, but he remained closed lipped. It didn't matter now; the fire was put out and everyone could go home.

Muir and his team left Kanosh's baseball field perfectly clean. There was no litter in town, no broken fences and no dirty tire marks in the grass fields. It was as if he and his 500 extra crew members had never come.

They only left behind their accomplishment. Firefighters had put out a fire that covered 363,052 acres of charred and devastated land. After nine days of around-the-clock work, the fire was gone and life would return to normal.

In the past year since the fire, rehabilitation experts have reseeded the land, farmers have replanted their crops and ranchers have re-established their herds. But Howard Allred is still on the phone with the feds.

"I've been trying to get that dang [federal disaster relief] money FEMA promised us," he said. "I've got my work cut out for me."

Copyright Brigham Young University 2 Jul 2008