Grand County urges residents to skip fireworks as fire risk climbs

Grand County officials asked residents to leave the fireworks on the shelf as the Fourth of July approached and fire danger climbed toward a 10-year high. The county commission adopted a resolution on June 16 urging people to skip personal fireworks, a request meant to cut off one of the most predictable ignition sources in one of the driest stretches of the year.

The warning was tied to conditions that a county fire official described as very high at all elevations. In the lower elevations, fire danger had already reached the 95th percentile for the energy release component, the measure that tracks how hot, intense and hard to control a wildfire could be. In the La Sal Mountains, that figure was nearing the 97th percentile, which the official said was approaching a 10-year high for this time of year.

That timing mattered. In Grand County, the middle of June through the end of July is the annual peak of fire danger, and July 4 falls right in the middle of it. The county had already seen fires this spring, including a semi-truck fire that spread into roadside brush in March and a series of fires along Interstate 70 in early June that led to arson charges.

For the Four Corners adventure crowd, the stakes ran far beyond a backyard display. Fire restrictions and wildfire risk can affect trailheads, roadside camping, river shuttles, backcountry access and public-land travel across the red-rock country around Moab and the rest of Grand County. Federal land partners planned to have crews out on July 4, a sign of how closely agencies were watching the holiday window as temperatures stayed high and the landscape dried out.

The county’s message was not a ban, but it was a blunt reminder that a single spark could close roads, threaten campsites or trigger evacuations. Anyone who still used fireworks was urged to keep them far from vegetation and structures and to have water on hand. In Grand County, protecting the holiday weekend meant protecting the recreation season itself before one careless spark could change the route, the campsite or the road out.