This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Unified Police officers arrested a woman early Wednesday morning after she allegedly set a trailer-full of hay bales afire near a TRAX light rail station in Midvale.
UPD Lt. Jared Richardson confirmed the 32-year-old woman was questioned at the scene of the 3:53 a.m. blaze, arrested and booked into the Salt Lake County jail on suspicion of arson.
According to a jail probable cause statement, the woman initially was wrestled to the ground by a security guard and held for arriving police officers. The woman allegedly told officers she had been looking to scavenge a used cigarette from the ground, and accidentally set the hay on fire while using her lighter for pre-dawn illumination.
However, a witness told police the woman had deliberately moved along the trailer, lighting the hay every 5-8 feet.
Unified Fire Battalion Chief Brian Anderton said it took crews about 45 minutes to put out the fire, which spread to a second of four trailer-loads of hay, apparently placed near the 7800 S. State Street station as a sound barrier for ongoing construction work.
"The fire consumed about one and half trailers' worth of hay," Anderton said. "The fire got so embedded into the hay that we had to pull a lot of it off the trailers to finally put it out."
The fire did not affect the TRAX station itself, and no injuries were reported.
Damage estimates were in excess of $2,500.
Twitter: @remims