Park City’s view of fire danger

On Tuesday, we had the visit of Cherie Wellmon. She is the Park City Fire Marshal and as such, is responsible for the administration and inspections of the Park City Wildland Urban Interface Code, Operational Fire Permits, and Main Street annual fire inspections. 

I wrote previously that I’d keep you posted about her visit. She took a look at our neighbors’ properties, then walked around our house and said that all was fine and we were okay in terms of fire security. What we learned from her is that our City doesn’t want to intrude too much into its residents’ freedom of doing little or nothing about clear and present fire danger. 

To get to that point, we ought to get the City Council to change its municipal code, so for the time being, we’ll need to keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best. As always, things may evolve when we have a catastrophe. 

We also learned that our local fire fighters will triage the houses or buildings that are worth saving based on their quality and surroundings which was a reassuring comment towards our own home that is both recent and well maintained. That wasn’t exactly what we wanted to hear, but again, "You can’t always get what you want" as the famous Rolling Stones’ song goes...