Wildfires of 2009

Horse Valley Fire

2009Garfield County, UtahWildfire

The Horse Valley Fire burned 2,889 acres in Garfield County, Utah, in 2009. It was discovered on July 5, 2009, and contained on July 30, 2009. The cause was recorded as natural. Incident teams reported 1 structure destroyed.

Size
2,889 acres
Discovered
July 5, 2009
Contained
July 30, 2009
Cause
Natural
Structures destroyed
1

Map

The burned area boundary MTBS mapped from Landsat imagery, 2,562 acres. Point of origin as reported, 37.761, -112.653.

The record

Reported final size
2,889 acres
Burned area mapped by MTBS
2,562 acres
Area inside the final perimeter
2,888 acres
Discovered
July 5, 2009, 6:44 p.m. local time
Contained
July 30, 2009, 4:00 p.m. local time
Cause
Natural
State
Utah
County
Garfield County
Land ownership at origin
Forest Service
Reporting unit
Dixie National Forest
Agency
Forest Service
Unit
UTDIF
Incident type
Wildfire
MTBS fire identifier
UT3778711264620090705
MTBS assessment
Extended
Fire occurrence record
FS-1477481
Perimeter map method
GPS - Uncorrected Data
Note on the perimeter
Fire was initially managed for multiple objectives. Fire was converted to wildfire after burning onto private property during third day of red flag event.

The three sizes are three measurements: the size the agency reported when the fire was out, the burned area MTBS drew from satellite imagery before and after, and the GIS area inside the final perimeter, unburned islands included. They rarely agree exactly.

From the incident teams’ reports

The status summaries (ICS-209 forms) the incident teams filed: 13, from July 7, 2009 to September 17, 2009. These are the teams’ own estimates, written while the incident was running, and personnel is totaled from the resources each report lists. A fact the reports leave blank is not shown, and a zero on the form is treated as blank.

Structures destroyed
1
Most structures threatened at once
1
Injuries
1
Most personnel assigned
302 on July 13, 2009
Most aircraft assigned
5
Cost reported by the teams
$2.1 million, in 2009 dollars
Cause on the reports
Lightning or other natural
Primary fuel model reported
Timber (Litter and Understory)
Suppression strategy reported
Full suppression

Acres reported by day

The largest rise between two days’ reports was 665 acres, on July 9, 2009.

Acres at the last status summary of each day. Days with no report are not shown.
Reported acres by day, as a table
DayAcresChange from the day before
Jul 7, 200911
Jul 8, 200985+74
Jul 9, 2009750+665
Jul 10, 20091,200+450
Jul 11, 20091,800+600
Jul 12, 20092,184+384
Jul 13, 20092,600+416
Jul 14, 20092,916+316
Jul 15, 20092,9160
Jul 16, 20092,9160
Jul 17, 20092,9160
Jul 30, 20092,916
Sep 17, 20092,916

Other large fires in Utah in 200912

FireAcresStartCause
Big Pole Fire44,345Aug 6, 2009Natural
Dairy Valley Fire29,731
Devils Den Fire14,371
Mill Flat Fire12,607Jul 25, 2009Natural
White Rocks 1 Fire7,981Aug 6, 2009Natural
Sawmill Canyon Fire6,986Aug 5, 2009Natural
Broken Ridge Fire4,929Aug 2, 2009Natural
Bridge Fire4,759Jun 14, 2009Natural
Rat Hole Fire3,115Jul 21, 2009Natural
Blind Canyon Fire2,602Jul 15, 2009Natural
Solomon Basin Wfm Fire2,475Jul 30, 2009Natural
Avocet 2009 Fire2,400Mar 17, 2009

Every fire of 2009 Utah fire history

Nearby

Sources

Perimeters from the National Interagency Fire Center’s Interagency Fire Perimeter History, compiled from the Forest Service, BLM, BIA, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, the Alaska Interagency Fire Center and CAL FIRE. Burned areas and ignition dates from Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS), a program of the US Geological Survey and the USDA Forest Service. Fire reports from Short, Karen C. 2022, Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014], 6th Edition, Forest Service Research Data Archive, doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6. Records before 2014 were joined by this site: a fire report to the burned area its MTBS identifier names, a perimeter to the burned area it lies in when the names or the sizes agree. Incident figures from ICS-209-PLUS: St. Denis, Lise A., Karen C. Short, Kathryn McConnell, Maxwell C. Cook, Nathan P. Mietkiewicz, Mollie Buckland and Jennifer K. Balch, 2023, All-hazards dataset mined from the US National Incident Management System 1999-2020, Scientific Data 10, 112, doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-01955-0; data on figshare, doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19858927.v3, licensed CC BY 4.0. This site matched each incident to the fire by the dataset’s own links where it has them, and otherwise by name, start date, state and size, and left out figures too large to be possible for a fire of its size.