Park City still without permanent emergency manager as fire season nears

Park City headed into the dry season without a permanent emergency program manager, leaving the city’s core emergency planning job open months after the previous manager departed late in 2025.

That vacancy matters because Park City describes emergency management as a public safety function that prepares, plans, mitigates, responds and recovers from local emergencies and disasters. The job sits at the center of the city’s Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan, NIMS compliance, emergency management grants, EOC operations, training and exercises, and liaison work with Summit County Emergency Services and state and federal partners.

The missing permanent manager also leaves a gap in a coordination structure that is much larger than one desk. Park City says its Emergency Management Group includes the emergency program manager, city manager, police chief, city engineer, city attorney, communications manager, fire marshal, IT manager and public works director. In a wildfire-prone mountain town with steep terrain, dense neighborhoods and heavy visitor traffic, that group is the machinery that has to move quickly when evacuation routes, alerts and road closures suddenly matter.

The timing sharpened the concern. Nearly 400 people attended the second annual Park City Wildfire Preparedness Fair on April 25, nearly quadruple the turnout from the prior year, as homeowners and neighborhood groups crowded into the region’s wildfire-readiness push. Nine homeowners associations across Wasatch and Summit counties helped organize the event, while Wasatch Fire District Warden Troy Morgan said the season looked likely to be busier than last year and that Utah’s dry conditions had the agency on alert.

Park City and Summit County have both been leaning hard on public preparedness tools. The city’s emergency page offers annual fire safety information, wildfire resources, evacuation-planning tools and wildland-urban interface materials. Park City and Summit County also run a shared Emergency Alert Program that can send wildfire, road-closure and evacuation alerts by phone, email or text to the countywide population. Residents can also text SCFIRE to 91896 for alerts on fire conditions, prescribed burns and active fire updates.

The vacancy has become a governance issue because Park City has spent years building its wildfire-response framework. The city requested proposals for a Community Wildfire Risk Assessment in November 2021 and adopted an amended version of Utah’s Wildland Urban Interface Code in June 2020. On the county side, Summit County Emergency Management identifies wildfires, drought and other seasonal hazards as ongoing risks and lists Kathryn McMullin as director.

With fire season approaching, the unanswered question is not whether Park City has wildfire plans on paper. It is whether the city can keep those plans moving at full strength without a permanent manager in place.