Utah’s Monroe Canyon Fire damages power poles and structures as it grows to over 55,000 acres

Drought, high winds and difficult terrain have created a perfect storm in the forests south of Richfield.

The Monroe Canyon Fire has exploded to 55,642 acres, making it the largest wildfire in Utah this year. Containment dropped from 11% on Thursday to 7% Friday morning, according to an update from the Great Basin Complex Incident Management Team 5, which is overseeing firefighting operations.

“This is a big one. It’s been a while, it’s been a few years, since we’ve had one like this,” Gov. Spencer Cox said in a media briefing in Richfield on Friday morning. “And this is Central Utah. I take this very personally. These are my people.”

Cox met with local and state officials, dispatchers and fire crews tackling the blaze throughout the day on Friday.

The Monroe Canyon Fire has destroyed 10 homes, said Jim Bartlett, public information officer for Great Basin Complex Incident Management Team 5. They were primarily cabins and second homes. Four smaller structures, such as wood sheds, also burned.

Evacuation orders remain in place for Burrville and the Bear Valley area. But Sevier County lifted evacuation orders for Monroe Canyon and Poverty on Friday afternoon thanks to firefighters’ suppression efforts in those areas, county sheriff Nathan Curtis said.

The Great Basin incident management team has also been coordinating with the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, Bartlett said. The fire has spread to the Koosharem Band’s land, leading to the evacuation of an RV park there.

Beyond evacuations, the fire has impacted travel and power for communities surrounding the blaze.

Communities deal with power outages, road closures

The fire spread to state Route 24 Thursday evening, prompting a closure. Firefighters quickly responded, though, and the road was reopened Friday morning with a pilot car escorting drivers through the fire zone, according to the Forest Service. Still, William Taufer, Sevier County emergency manager, said in a social media post that more partial or full closures are likely in the coming days.

Residents in Wayne and Sevier Counties have also gone without electricity this past week. Garkane Energy has shut off power for periods of time as a safety precaution. Additionally, the blaze has burned at least a dozen power poles, according to updates the electric cooperative posted on Facebook throughout the week.

Crews patched the transmission line and braced damaged poles to restore power to Wayne County Thursday evening.

“[Garkane] did everything possible, really miraculously, to get it back on last night,” Cox said Friday morning. “That was a lot sooner than expected.”

Next, Garkane plans to install five large generators so it can shut down the transmission line while also keeping the lights on for surrounding communities.

Even these short-term solutions have been challenging to implement, though. The fire is “burning just yards away” from the transmission line and “the wind is really testing the temporary fixes,” the electric cooperative said in a post Friday morning.

Once the generators are installed, Garkane said it will keep the transmission line off until the fire is out and the company can safely access the area.

“If you are running a generator at your home or business, please make sure your main breaker is turned OFF,” Garkane posted on Facebook Thursday evening. “This protects our crews and keeps everyone safe while we work to restore power.”

Hunting may be ‘severely impacted’

Meanwhile, hunting season for deer, elk and bear begins this month, and the fire will affect that as well as recreational access. Already, the Fishlake National Forest has enacted an emergency closure of areas north of Dry Creek Canyon Road. In a statement Friday, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources said roughly 1,200 hunters have permits that will be impacted by this wildfire.

The division offered three options for hunters with permits in the area. Hunters can keep their permits and hunt any open areas. Alternatively, if hunters contact the division prior to their hunt start date, they can extend their hunt to the 2026 season or surrender their permits and receive a refund.

“We wanted to provide some relief options for hunters whose hunts would be severely impacted by the current wildlife and associated closures,” Lindy Varney, licensing coordinator for the division, said in a statement. “While wildfires occur in Utah almost every summer and fall, this particular fire closed a significant portion of this hunting unit.”

Extreme fire weather will continue

Cox issued a state of emergency on Thursday due to wildfire conditions across the state. The order lasts for 30 days and “unlocks all available state resources to protect lives, homes, livestock and drinking-water supplies,” according to a statement from the governor’s office.

Crews likely will be battling this fire for a while.

“The odds of us putting it out anytime soon are pretty low, just to be honest,” Cox said Friday morning. “We know the forecast is not great right now. We’ve seen extreme fire, erratic fire behavior all day long, even at night.”

The National Weather Service has issued a red flag warning for much of southern Utah through Saturday night due to high winds and low humidity.

“We’re literally at 5% humidities here,” Bartlett said. “Then the sun beats down on it all day, which raises the actual temperature.”

The area where the blaze sparked in Fishlake National Forest is also thick with dry timber.

“The Monroe Canyon fire is burning in an area of very difficult terrain,” Bartlett said, “and in a very heavy fuel load that has been subjected to about three years of drought that includes a great deal of dead and down timber up there that is very receptive to fire.”

In recent years, the Forest Service has reduced wildfire fuels, such as dead trees and dense undergrowth, in areas of Fishlake National Forest nearest to communities. This initially helped contain the spread of the Monroe Canyon Fire, according to Bartlett, and gave firefighters time to deploy resources. However, strong winds, gusting up to 35 miles per hour, blew the blaze outside the treated areas.

“Those winds start interacting with this very canyon-like terrain and start blowing it out,” Bartlett said. “And when it finds a little hole, it shoots out, and it starts throwing embers a mile to a half a mile ahead of itself into receptive fuel — and boom, here we go again.”

Firefighters have been busy protecting structures, including removing vegetation and installing sprinkler lines, which has helped protect some homes. The blaze tore through Magleby, where there’s a “cluster” of homes, Bartlett said, and only destroyed one structure.

The Monroe Canyon Fire was first discovered July 13, and the cause is currently under investigation.

Since June, crews have been battling fires across southern Utah where drought and extreme fire weather persist. The team currently fighting the Monroe Canyon Fire were recently tackling the now-contained France Canyon Fire, which grew to over 34,000 acres near Bryce Canyon National Park.

“We had some very sporty days on France Canyon,” Bartlett said. “But it wasn’t like this: back-to-back red flag with 5% humidity day after day after day.”

While it’s the largest fire Utah has seen this year, it is still well below the Milford Flat Fire, Utah’s largest blaze in recent recorded history. It destroyed 363,052 acres in 2007, according to the Utah Hazard Mitigation Plan.

There are currently 1,217 firefighters tackling the Monroe Canyon blaze, according to the Forest Service. The incident management team is preparing for more red flag conditions and has a series of contingency plans to adapt to the changing fire behavior.

“It’s like a dance that we do with these things,” Bartlet said, “like this living creature that comes out and it starts eating fuel and we dance with it.”