Red flag warning issued as crews brace for difficult days near Beaver

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• A particularly dangerous situation, or PDS, red flag warning was issued in Utah for the first time.
• The Cottonwood Fire has burned nearly 71,000 acres in southern Utah.
• Beaver officials report no loss of life despite dozens of homes destroyed.

BEAVER — Forecasters issued a first-of-its-kind warning in Utah Thursday evening as firefighters at a public meeting cautioned about potentially difficult days ahead fighting the Cottonwood Fire.

The National Weather Service issued a particularly dangerous situation, or PDS, red flag warning for areas of the southwest desert and central and southern mountains, including those where the Cottonwood Fire had already burned nearly 71,000 acres.

"The Salt Lake City office has never issued a PDS red flag warning ever," incident meteorologist Jason Straub said to those in attendance at the meeting held in Beaver High School's auditorium. "This is a serious condition coming."

The warning cautioned about extreme fire conditions with humidity as low as 8% and with wind gusts of up to 50 mph.

"Things aren't safe," said Beaver County Sheriff Cody Black. "I mean, God bless us all, because that's what we're going to need — we're going to need his help."

Locals, including Beaver Mayor Matt Robinson, previously said they feared dozens of homes and condos had already been burned.

Volunteers told KSL earlier Thursday that roughly a dozen individuals and families were displaced by the fire because their primary residences were destroyed.

"When this thing jumped off, we knew it was going to be bad right out the gate," the sheriff said. "There's no loss of life. There's no significant injury, and that's a 'W.'"

Firefighters told the crowd they were working to place lines and contingency lines and were watching the southeast corner of the fire, which they said was moving.

"I don't have any scientific stuff, but this sucks," said Beaver County Commissioner Tammy Pearson. "Our heart and soul is on that mountain."

Pearson expressed hope after going on a tour Wednesday night.

"There are some islands, there are some green spots, there are some saves," Pearson said, noting she saw several cabins that had been saved. "We're strong. We're tough. We'll figure it out, and we're here to help you."

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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Andrew Adams

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Andrew Adams is an award-winning journalist and reporter for KSL. For two decades, he's covered a variety of stories for KSL, including major crime, politics and sports.